by Ada Kessler

It’s no secret that 2023 has been an incredibly successful year for Taylor Swift. One of the most notable achievements thus far is her newly achieved billionaire status following her tour success. Her song “Is It Over Now” dethroned her other song “Cruel Summer” as number one on the charts and she released two re-recorded albums this year alone. Swift embarked on ‘The Eras Tour’ which became the second-highest grossing tour ever and it resumed on November 9th in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the tour was turned into a movie released October 13th which is currently in theaters.

On August 8th, the final night of the U.S. leg of the tour, Swift had a long anticipated surprise for fans. She’d been teasing the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) for months, and had already released two re-recorded songs from her album: “This Love” and “Wildest Dreams.” Throughout the night, Swift alluded to the album with teal costumes, a color frequently associated with the album. Near the end of the concert, an image announcing the October 27th release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was projected on stage, and thus, the wait began.

1989 is one of Swift’s most well known albums. It includes some of her biggest hits, including “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off,” and “Bad Blood.” It is her best selling album to date, and solidified her controversial genre pivot from country to pop.

So, why is Swift re-recording her most successful album? In an unfair deal, Scooter Braun bought her previous record label, Big Machine Records. He owned, and still owns the rights to her first six albums: Taylor Swift(2006), Fearless(2008), Speak Now(2010), Red(2012), 1989(2014), and Reputation(2017). Swift went on to re-record these albums for the purpose of regaining those rights, and for sentimental reasons. She has re-recorded four out of six of these albums: Fearless, Red, Speak Now and most recently, 1989. But does her most recent re-release live up to the original?

The album was primarily worked on by Swift herself, along with her longtime producer and friend Jack Antonoff. Although not all of the tracks were fully self-written, Swift provided the vocals and lyrics for all 22 tracks. Antonoff provided instrumentation and backing vocals for various songs on the album and produced tracks such as “You Are In Love (Taylor’s Version)”, “Out Of The Woods (Taylor’s Version),” and all of the vault tracks. The album included five previously unreleased songs: “‘Slut!’,” “Say Don’t Go,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Suburban Legends,” and “Is It Over Now?” It had only one feature on the “Bad Blood” remix with Kendrick Lamar, who re-recorded his part from the remix on the original album.

When listening to the album, most of the songs sounded similar to the originals. “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” and “Welcome To New York (Taylor’s Version)” sounded the most reminiscent of their original counterparts. On certain tracks, the production sounded noticeably different, and on songs like  “Out Of The Woods (Taylor’s Version)” the new production added depth I hadn’t even known the original lacked. 

Tweaked production on “I Know Places (Taylor’s Version)” and “How You Get The Girl (Taylor’s Version)” enhanced the songs, however, the new production of  “Style (Taylor’s Version)” was disappointing, and didn’t live up to the original. The lackluster nature of this track is in part due to the vocals, as Swift sounded very auto-tuned in parts, almost robotic. Most songs sounded fairly natural, but you could certainly hear autotune in a handful of songs which lessened how much I enjoyed them.

Of the vault tracks, “‘Slut!’” was the most surprising. What I had expected to be a power ballad about reclaiming the media’s narrative about her love life, turned out to be a tender love song about how, with a fulfilling personal life, Swift is unphased by the things that used to bother her. My favorite of the vault tracks was “Say Don’t Go,” which delivered heartbreaking lyrics like “ I say I love you, you say nothing back,” followed by a beat of silence for emphasis. “Bad Blood”, featuring Kendrick Lamar was another strong track. Lamar makes the song exponentially better and amplifies the feeling of anger over a close companion’s betrayal especially in the lyrics: “You forgive, you forget, but you never let it go.”

So, does 1989 (Taylor’s Version) live up to its original? Yes, it does. Although the album has points that sound very different, the nature of the re-records mean that they must legally be sonically different from the originals. Even with some noticeably different vocals and production on several tracks, I found 1989 (Taylor’s Version) to deliver all the poignant emotions of the original, sometimes even better than the original. The fans seem to agree, as 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has already garnered over one million sales and led to the crashing of Spotify. Swift’s success shows no signs of slowing, and it will undoubtedly continue as she embarks on the newest leg of The Era’s Tour.