Taylor Swift’s Re-Recorded Version of ‘Red’ is Out Now
The wait is over for Swifties as the singer is bringing back the fall feels, scarves and heartbreak woes with the release of her re-recorded ‘Taylor’s Version’ of her album, ‘Red’. It’s finally out on streaming services and store shelves.
The album, originally released in 2012, featured 16 songs on the standard version and 22 songs on the deluxe edition and was home to her hit singles ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,’ ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘22’. ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ follows the release of ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version),’ which debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200 chart when it was released in April.
The 30-track album dropped on 11th November and includes collaborations with Phoebe Bridgers, Chris Stapleton and Ed Sheeran. Marking the occasion, Swift tweeted: “It never would have been possible to go back & remake my previous work, uncovering lost art & forgotten gems along the way if you hadn’t emboldened me. Red is about to be mine again, but it has always been ours. Now we begin again. Red (my version) is out.”
Swift re-recorded the album this year, after her label Big Machine sold the original masters to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings. Swift quickly spoke out against the sale, saying it was done without her consultation and effectively put her legacy “in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.” The singer announced shortly afterwards that she would re-record her first six albums.
She also unveiled songs ‘from the vault’ which included collaborations with country singers Maren Morris and Keith Urban. ‘From the Vault’ tracks are songs that were written for the album originally, but failed to make the final cut. She will also include her editions of ‘Better Man’ and ‘Babe’, songs she wrote that were eventually recorded by Little Big Town and Sugarland.
Swift has previously revealed that her heartbreak anthem “All Too Well” long speculated to be inspired by her former relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal was originally 10-minutes long, leaving fans to long hold out hope that the extended version would be released. Swift seemingly confirmed she would share the longer version when teasing the re-recorded album’s upcoming tracklist.
“This will be the first time you will hear all 30 songs that were meant to go on Red,” Swift says in a statement. “And hey, one of them is even ten minutes long,” she adds, referring to album closer “All Too Well.”
That song is also the inspiration behind a new short film that Swift released, to help promote the new version of Red. Swift directed the film and stars in it alongside Stranger Thing‘s Sadie Sink and Teen Wolf star, Dylan O’Brien.
“Musically and lyrically, Red resembled a heartbroken person,” Swift says, about the album. “It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past. Like trying on pieces of a new life, I went into the studio and experimented with different sounds and collaborators. And I’m not sure if it was pouring my thoughts into this album, hearing thousands of your voices sing the lyrics back to me in passionate solidarity, or if it was simply time, but something was healed along the way,” she says.
To promote and celebrate the album’s rerelease, Swift joined hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers on their respective late-night shows on the evening of 11th November.
Though the original Red album earned nominations for the 56th annual Grammys, including album of the year, it failed to secure a win. Swift shared in an interview with Grammy Pro that she “cried a little bit” after not winning and that would mark the night she decided that her next album, 1989, would be a pop album.
The announcement of her version of Red came as a surprise to fans with many expecting the singer’s next installment of her re-recording series to be 1989 —especially after providing Easter Egg clues to the album during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and revealing that the re-recorded version of her single ‘Wildest Dreams’ would be featured in the movie Spirit.
However, the singer has since continued to drop Easter eggs. After a fan shared a TikTok video that noticed the car featured in the ‘All Too Well’ short film teaser was a car made in 1989, Swift teased, “Can’t stop won’t stop being cryptic and weird. That’s just the beginning. It’s gonna be a fun week.”
Swift is releasing multiple versions of the physical album on CD, vinyl and as special-edition sets.
—-Silviya.Y
