Taylor Swift begins to re-release her old songs – spot the difference
Image Credit: Raphael Lovaski
The new ‘Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’ dropped on Friday and Swift’s rerecorded Fearless album is on the way.
Taylor Swift has started to release the re-recordings of her first six original albums, beginning with 2008’s Fearless. ‘Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’ dropped on Friday and by the end of the day had earned 5.8 million streams in the US.
Swift is recording her old albums again, one by one from scratch, to retake control of her music. The master recordings were sold without her consent in 2019 when Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings bought her previous label Big Machine.
Swift produced ‘Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’ herself. If you’re not completely sick of corny songs after Valentine’s Day, have a listen and see if you can spot the differences between the two tracks:
Not a lot of difference, huh? The production is sharper and her voice is more mature – Swift was 18 years old when the first version came out. But at first glance the arrangement and lyrics are the same.
Swift’s fans love it when she puts coded messages in her work – this release was no different with clues hidden in the announcement.
The code revealed that the release date for the whole album Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is April 9th. She has also revealed that the musicians featured on the new track are her touring band.
The rerecording of Swift’s masters sets a new precedent for artists taking creative control over their music. It’s also an incredibly savvy business decision for Swift. She hasn’t wasted any time in getting started working on the albums, but even so with five still to go that’s a good few years of guaranteed revenue from fans curious to see how the ‘Taylor’s version’ recordings differ from the albums they’ve adored over the years.