The old Taylor can come to the phone! Why? Oh, because she’s back!
Of course, the ‘old Taylor’ is not really a thing. Taylor Swift started off making country music and tried different styles and genres over the years, ranging from pop and rock to alternative. She has made songs about fictional characters and her own life, heartbreak songs, and happy love songs. Now, she is rerecording her old music which she previously did not own due to a contract with her previous manager, Scooter Brown.
But she is not just rerecording her old albums with her new voice, she is also releasing songs ‘from the vault’, songs that she wrote around the same times as the albums but that did not make it onto the final versions of the albums.
Only last week, she released a video with a seemingly random combination of letters for her fans to decode, calling it “level expert.” It took Swifties only a few minutes to figure out that these combinations were the titles for the vault songs of her album Fearless which is the first rerecorded one she released. She did not officially announce it but fans correctly figured out that it would be released on Friday, April 9 because she usually releases albums on Fridays and the numbers 4 (April being the fourth month of the year) and 9 (the ninth day of April) add up to Taylor Swift’s lucky number, 13.
Now, on April 7, she surprisingly dropped a new song that fans have never heard before, “Mr. Perfectly Fine.” It’s a happy song with sad lyrics, seemingly about Joe Jonas who broke up with Taylor Swift in a short phone call in 2008. That phone call was exactly 27 seconds long, and Taylor Swift uses the word “Mister” 27 times in “Mr. Perfectly Fine.” Also, the album Fearless now has 27 songs in total.
“most of Taylor’s fans are fascinated by her versatility”
For years, people have been talking about ‘missing the old Taylor’, meaning the young Taylor Swift who made country music. However, most of her fans are fascinated by her versatility and proud of her for succeeding so immensely in all the genres she has tried. Now, listening to her ‘new’ songs that she wrote when she was a teenager, it comes with mixed feelings. There is nostalgia for that time, naturally, but also pride for what Taylor Swift has accomplished and how far she has come. In the song she released last week, she sings about perhaps never getting over a breakup, now we know that she is in a happy long-term relationship with actor Joe Alwyn.
“She went from being a shy, heartbroken teenager […] to being a grown woman with 11 Grammy awards”
She went from being a shy, heartbroken teenager, who was at times a little “mouthy,” as she later said about herself for calling out an ex-boyfriend on national TV – something she would no longer do – to being a grown woman with 11 Grammy awards and a net worth of $400 million. She has gone through breakups, being looked down upon for “only writing songs about her exes” and “not being a real singer,” dealt with an eating disorder, and won a sexual assault case in 2013.
“Taylor Swift will finally have the rights to the music that made her famous”
So no, the old Taylor is not back. She will never be her “mouthy” teenage self again. She has grown and learned so much but she is continuing to release her music and now a whole new generation will be able to grow up with albums like Fearless, Red, and Speak Now, but they will have ‘Taylor’s Version’ of them, meaning that Taylor Swift will finally have the rights to the music that made her famous.
Annalena Stache
Featured image courtesy of Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash. This image has in no way been altered. Image license is available here.