Taylor Swift has just released the highly anticipated “Red (Taylor’s Version),” the re-recording of her fourth studio album “Red.”  The album includes all 16 songs from the original album, the 4 songs that were released on the deluxe version, 8 songs from the vault, and an extended version of the fan favorite track ,”All Too Well.” This is the second re-recorded album Swift has released. Earlier this year she released the recorded version of her second album “Fearless.”

The reason Swift is releasing re-recordings of her previous work is because of the drama between her and Scooter Braun. In 2018 her contract with Big Machine Records expired and despite her wishes, she wasn’t able to buy her masters back. Big Machine was sold to Ithaca Holdings which is owned by Scooter Braun (manager to artists like Ariana Grande , Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato ) giving her masters to him. By releasing re-recordings she’s regaining financial control over her work and music. The reason she’s able to re-record her music is because while she doesn’t own the recording of her work, she owns the composition. She plans on doing this with all of the records she doesn’t own, excluding her last 3 albums Lover, Folklore, and Evermore.

Taylor’s Version

The re-released songs are from both the original album and the deluxe album. Swift’s voice has improved a lot since the original release almost 10 years ago, so vocally the album is better to listen to. My favorite songs from the re-recordings are “Treacherous,” “All Too Well,” and “The Lucky One.” There isn’t much difference between the original and re-recording, but Swift gets to profit off of the streams in Red (TV).

From The Vault

Along with the songs from the original album, Taylor Swift also released songs that were originally going to be on the album which are labeled with (from the vault). Starting with “Ronan,” a song that was released as a charity single based off a blog from Maya Thompson about her son Ronan who died from cancer, Maya is credited as a writer for the track. Two songs “Better Man” and Babe” scrapped from back then were released by different artist. “Nothing New” which features Phoebe Bridgers is notable because for the first time Swift has featured a female artist as a significant part of her song. “I Bet You Think About Me” was released with a music video directed by Blake Lively. The closing track is an extended version of her song “All Too Well.” The song is 10 minutes long, making it the longest song to sit atop the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. The song is also accompanied by a short film starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink.