2023 may be the summer of the Swiftie (that’s fans of Taylor Swift if you’re not in the know.) Not only have they been graced with a tour spanning almost all of Swift’s eras, but July 9 marked the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). Swifties, we’re feasting right now!
The release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) marks the third album re-recorded by Swift so that she can own the master recordings of her own music, a process that began in 2019. Per Vox:
The whole process began, though, back in 2019. That’s when the news broke that Swift’s old record label — Big Machine Records, which she left in 2018 — had been sold to music megamanager Scooter Braun. The sale gave Braun the rights to all the master recordings for Swift’s old music, meaning that anyone who wanted to license one of Swift’s old songs to play in a TV show or movie or an ad would have to ask for Braun’s permission and pay him a licensing fee. And given that Braun used to work with sworn Taylor Swift enemy Kanye West, Swift was devastated. In an emotional Tumblr post, she called the news “my worst case scenario.”
Not long afterward, in an interview with CBS’s Tracy Smith, Swift said that she planned to sidestep Braun by rerecording everything in the songbook that he now owns, meaning all the songs she had released prior to her August 2019 album Lover.
The end result sees an older, wiser, and emotionally more mature Swift revisiting the music she released when she was younger. And friends, it’s a treat. Speak Now was released in 2010 when Swift was 19, and some of the lyrics don’t hold up through a 2023 lens. Particularly in Better Than Revenge, a song where she accuses another girl of stealing her boyfriend. For example:
She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think
Better Than Revenge, Taylor Swift
She’s an actress, whoa
She’s better known for the things that she does
On the mattress, whoa
In the new Taylor’s Version iteration of the song, those lyrics have changed to:
She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think
Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift
She’s an actress, woah
He was a moth to the flame
She was holding the matches, woah
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) sounds better than the original. The production values are better, her voice is stronger, and the years between have allowed Swift to hone her craft and imbue a certain pathos that was lacking in the original version. There is also the substantial distance from the real-life events that Swift wrote about, most notably her break-up with John Mayer which allegedly inspired her song Dear John. This distance gives her the benefit of hindsight and softens what once felt like a raw wound. As a result, her anger has long since dissipated, and she has since come out and asked fans to leave Mayer alone. This is a direct response to Red (Taylor’s Version)‘s release, where Jake Gyllenhaal was bombarded with threats because he was the (rumored) source of inspiration for All Too Well.
A notable quote from the video, asking her fans to extend “kindness” in their internet activities is:
I’m thirty three years old, I don’t care about anything that happened to me at 19 except the songs I wrote…
Taylor Swift via Taylor Swift Updates
Mayer, for his part, posted a cryptic “Please Be Kind” message as well in the last picture on Instagram on the same day Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was released:
Ultimately, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is about reclaiming something Swift rightfully believes is her own. The album is not about a short-lived failed romance from almost fifteen years ago or any other sources of inspiration at the time. It’s long-forgotten water under the bridge. Swift has matured her writing abilities significantly since then and no longer mines her personal life as overtly for on-the-nose inspiration in her music. When you’re nineteen, most of what you encounter in your life as you become an adult is new, scary, and overwhelming. As you get older, you rely on your experiences and history to cope and help you make decisions. Ideally, this results in you not repeating past mistakes as much since you’re able to predict the probable outcome. Today, Swift would most likely not write a song with an ex-partner’s name in the title as evidenced by her more recent body of work. The Taylor’s Version albums are a way for Swift to lovingly remold past mistakes into something new while still honoring the younger versions of herself. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but how often do any of us get do-overs in life?
(featured image: Omar Vega/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
