The day has come, and we’re finally heading back to 2008.
On Thursday 11th February, international superstar Taylor Swift dropped the highly awaited news that she would be releasing the first of her re-recordings of her older music. This will see the singer finally reclaim her music from her previous recording label Big Machine Records, which was bought by record producer and music manager Scooter Braun in 2019 – around the same time as Swift left the label for Universal.
The label purchase would see Braun own the master recordings of Swift’s first six albums. This meant that for televised performances, and in order to sell merchandise of her previous work, Swift would need to seek permission from the label – even as far back as those she wrote when she was 13 years old.
On Good Morning America, the singer announced that the releases would begin with her 2008 breakout hit ‘Love Story’, would be released at midnight on Friday 12th Feb. Following that will be the re-recorded version of her 2008 Grammy award winning album Fearless set for an April 9th 2021 release.
The album has been renamed Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and will consist of the original 19 tracks from previous versions of the album, plus 6 brand new tracks never before released from her vault. ‘Songs from the Vault’ are referred to by Taylor as those that almost made the original 2008 album but didn’t.
Some eagle eyed fans also noticed that the new recorded version also included the fan favourite ‘Today was A Fairytale’ which Swift wrote and performed for the 2010 feature film Valentine’s Day, in which she also co-starred.
As a Taylor Swift fan myself, waking up Friday morning, I headed to my favourite music streaming service and heard Swift reclaiming her voice for the first time. It was a powerful and pure moment. As a fan of music in general, to hear an artist sound so happy and liberated in song was fantastic. I was brought back to the moment I heard ‘Love Story’ for the first time in 2008.
This is just the start of Swift reclaiming her voice, and reclaiming the narrative of her story. Hopefully this will also be a catalyst of a new era where artists no longer need to fight for the right to own their own voice and creation.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) will be released April 9th 2021
