Taylor Swift is so obsessed with her personal numerology that she decided to crash an already hectic news week. Today is 2/11, and 2 + 11 = 13, her favorite number, her lucky number. So today we got the long-awaited announcement: Taylor has re-recorded her album Fearless, which was one of the albums bought by Scooter Braun’s corporate consortium in the purchase of Big Machine. Taylor’s fans knew that she was working on re-recording her first six albums as a way to screw over Scooter Braun, who owns the original masters of all of those albums. The intention is to get the Snake Fam to buy up the new-old albums and devalue the Braun-held OG masters.
Taylor Swift made a brief appearance on Good Morning America today to share big news: More music is coming—old new music, actually. The singer revealed that the highly-anticipated re-recording of one of her biggest singles, 2009’s “Love Story,” will come out at midnight. She is also releasing her full re-recording album of Fearless soon, and it will have 26 songs—more than the 13-track original. She didn’t specify its exact release date yet.
“I’m so excited to share with you that tonight at midnight, I’ll be putting out my version of my song ‘Love Story,’ which was originally on my album Fearless,” Swift started. “I’ve now finished re-recording all of Fearless, which will be coming out soon. My version of Fearless will have 26 songs on it because I decided to add songs from the vault, which are songs that almost made the original Fearless album, but I’ve now gone back and recorded those so that everyone will be able to hear not only the songs that made the album but the songs that almost made it, the full picture.”
The singer’s note included a hidden message. If you string together the capitalized letters, it spells out “April Ninth”—April is the fourth month of the year, and 4+9 = Taylor’s lucky number of 13.
So she announces the re-recording on 2/11 and the Fearless re-recording will come out on 4/9. What will happen on March 10th though? I wonder! Oh well, at least she’s actually giving the Snake Fam even more new material, in the form of newly recorded old songs which never made it onto the original Fearless album. I’m actually very curious if Taylor is going to “fix” some of the mistakes from the original recordings – meaning, I wonder if she’s not just doing this to screw over Braun, but she genuinely wanted to change up the productions or arrangements on certain songs. Also, will she call this album Fearless too? Fearless 2? Fearless Redux? Fearless: Rise of the Snakes?
EXCLUSIVE: @taylorswift13 is dropping a new re-recorded version of her song “Love Story” at midnight! She tells @GMA she has re-recorded her entire “Fearless” album and gives us a sneak peek at the new cover! 💛💛 #TaylorSwiftOnGMA https://t.co/UQUu2QuE6O pic.twitter.com/8ZvZBmvgiR
— Good Morning America 💛💛 (@GMA) February 11, 2021
I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon. It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault. Love Story (Taylor’s Version) will be out tonight. Pre-order now at https://t.co/NqBDS6cGFl 💛💛 pic.twitter.com/Vjyy2gA72O
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) February 11, 2021
🚨@TaylorSwift13 reveals she has finished re-recording ‘Fearless,’ including six songs that originally didn’t make the album.
It has a new cover artwork and will drop “soon.” #FearlessTaylorsVersion pic.twitter.com/dLIdnAObst
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) February 11, 2021
Album cover courtesy of Taylor Swift.
I like the original fearless so this might backfire and make those songs more valuable! Perhaps another opportunity to be a victim!
I refuse to stream any of the music that doesn’t directly benefit Taylor, so I don’t mind if she updates the songs and neither will her fans. I know I’m not the only one doing this.
Lol how is this an opportunity to be a victim? I agree she definitely plays victim a lot, but I’m not sure how she even could in this situation.
I hope you realize that you make no sense.
I wish she would just go away.
What is going on with her hair in the GMA clip??
I think Taylor is trying to get her curls back. It takes years to grow all that heat damage out. That’s why, as a curly haired girl, I’m terrified of flat irons and blow outs
2 Fast, 2 Fearless?
+1
YES.
I’m excited for this! Her voice has changed and improved tremendously since she recorded her early albums. I’m guessing she really approached this as an artistic challenge to improve upon her original work and isn’t just rerecording it exactly how it was the first time.
Re: If this will work to devalue the originals — it just might. If Taylor can get radio play for the rerecords, get the rerecords in TV and movies instead of the originals, that’s no small thing.
I’m not sure the original can be devalued. She’s become so big. It might increase the original’s value. I’m going to buy the new one though, not gonna lie.
I don’t think this is going to help and it must feel awful to have your work taken from you.
This masters stuff always makes my head spin with confusion! I dont get why anyone who has then paid $300M for her masters allow her to then re-record them.
I think Taylor still owns the rights to her SONGS because she wrote them. It’s the original masters that she doesn’t own or control.
My understanding is they don’t own the songs – they own the original recordings. So if she’s going to re-record them all she has to do is change them enough that they aren’t exact copies and they can’t do anything about it.
Because they can release a ‘Best Hits Volume 1’, then Vol 2, and Vol 3, at any time they want, however many times they want, all with zero input from the artist.
They also get money every time anyone wants to use her songs for radio, TV, film and commercials. They can make huge amounts of money by allowing her songs to be used for ads or promotional stuff.
Adding songs from the vault is pretty cool, I’ll listen. I luv that she’s capitalizing off of her work being stolen lol good for her.
I mean, you can argue that the contracts originally denied her ownership of her masters are unfair, but her work wasn’t stolen.
That’s just dancing around the word ‘stolen’. Same thing.
If you click on the link it seems pretty clear the album is called Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
Yeah, even the tweets embedded here make that clear. I actually think it’s pretty genius. What loyal fan isn’t going to want to own “Taylor’s Versions” of her music. Whoever thought of that should get a huge bonus (and if Taylor, herself, thought of it, then I’m sure she will get a huge bonus as her fans buy up her rerecorded albums).
Scooter no longer owns Swift’s masters. He sold the catalogue to some investment firm last year.
But Scooter finagled a way to still make money off her original recordings as part of the sale to Shamrock Holdings.
Zero responsibility, but profit still lining his pockets. He’s a real piece of work that one.
Good for her.
I’m pretty excited about this. I really loved this album, it reminds me of the year I got engaged—we were engaged in 2009 and married in 2010. Love story was the song I out with our wedding slide show because I loved it so much. I want to hear how the album will be different now.
Kaiser, what mistakes are there on the original album? Just curious!
I just meant mistakes from her perspective, like she might have second-guessed some arrangement or production choice and now she wants to “fix” that.
Given that she’s adding new songs that she says were painful to leave off, it seems like that’s part of it too. Or just a good way to get people to buy it by offering new music, but explained in a more emotional way. I don’t know if I would have bought it without the new music included, although I am excited to hear some of these songs with her improved vocals, so I guess this strategy worked on me.
I am wondering/hoping that she leaves off Better Than Revenge when she gets to Speak Now. Or revises some of those lyrics. That song is so cringe and I feel like she now agrees that it’s not great so it will be interesting to see if she fixes that in the new recording.
That makes sense!
I am not a taylor swift fan, but I do enjoy some of her music. Knowing the hate/sexist/misogynistic/intimidation/scooter story behind the creation of this album, I would not buy the original although I loved those versions. And I dont think any girl/woman who knows the story would be compelled to get the old version. (unless the new versions are crap… :S hope not)
Longtime Taylor fan…I wonder if she plans to re-record any of her first album? Going straight to Fearless is fine with me as it’s a great album but there’s a few things on the self titled album that I enjoyed (Tim McGraw for one).
Yeah I am curious why she didn’t start with her first album either!
Because her earlier music is much less popular/played/profitable. It’s not like the new owners of her music will be running to cash in on those albums. Love Story is the most replayed of her songs. The quicker she puts out an alternative recording to that song, the less money Shamrock and Scooter can make off her.
She probably wanted Love Story out for Valentine’s Day
I’m sure she’ll do the self-titled (and everything else, of course), but Fearless is a better-known album with more hits. That’s really when she had her big break with Love Story. It was SUPER smart to start there to get some buzz.
Ooooh, I am SO CURIOUS about what her debut album will sound! I really love the songs but her voice sounds kind of too high-pitched in some parts because she was still so young, so it would be interesting to hear the songs now with her matured voice.
Her debut album is a fascinating case because it was charting on the Billboard Top 200 for 275 weeks (a bit longer than Fearless actually) and it did spawn some hits, but it was totally eclipsed by her other albums, so it’s kinda underrated now?
I still have a special place in my heart for it though.
Based on Lovestory Taylor is just re-recording not doing new versions. Which makes sense. The point is for people to buy and use the new version not the originals.
No one’s going to mention that in her Insta post it has APRIL NINTH as the capital letters scattered throughout??
For those wondering what she’ll get from this — vinyls of the re-record are going for $39 on her site. She has a full merch line and probably will for every re-release. She’s going to make SO much money from this, on top of the pleasure of knowing she owns this work.
Aren’t the re-recordings also about making her original versions less valuable on streaming sites? If in a year all 5 re-recorded albums are done and up under her profile name on for example spotify then future listeners will rather listen to those than the old versions. The future of music is streaming, soo…
I think so. My guess is she’s banking on fans listening to the new album versions which push the older ones further down on the list, so anyone looking to play a Taylor album will be more likely to play one of the newer ones vs. searching out the older ones. And the more fans like the newer versions of songs, the more those appear on randomized playlists.
Legitimate question – has any other artist re-recorded their ENTIRE catalog like this? Not just a one-off album or something that was remastered and cleaned up?
JoJo, the singer who made a splash in the mid-2000s with songs like Leave (Get Out) and Too Little Too Late, re-recorded her first two albums because her old record Label abused her and held her hostage for years. During that time she was recording tons of songs but the label never let her release them. They also put her on a horrible 500 kcal diet and told her they would only let her release an album if she got skinny enough.
She’s been fighting tooth and nail for years to get out and when she did, she re-recorded her discography in 2018 so she could put it on Spotify because her old label didn’t put them up there.