Last Friday, Taylor Swift dropped the second single for her upcoming album Fearless (Taylor’s Version). ‘You All Over Me‘ is one of the six bonus tracks which Swift is including ‘From the Vault’. These songs almost made the original album in 2008 and by including them, Swift hopes to provide her fans with “the whole story”.
‘You All Over Me‘ opens with a pulse that seems not too dissimilar to the intro of ‘peace’ from her 9th album Folklore which recently won Album of the Year at the GRAMMYs. The subsequent acoustic guitar and harmonica immediately transport you back to 2008 country Taylor, with perhaps a hint of ‘betty‘, also from Folklore. The track is a sorrowful yet reflective love ballad which details a speaker coming to terms with the end of a relationship, despite still feeling the memory of their former lover ‘all over’.
Lyrics that really stab you in the heart
Swifties have quickly identified the lyrics which really stab you in the heart, including the genius line “But like the dollar in your pocket, that’s been spent and traded in/ You can’t change where it’s been, reminds me of me”. Here, Swift likens the way cash can pass through many hands and belongs to many people in its lifetime to herself and the way one passes through relationships throughout their life.
“but no amount of freedom gets you clean, I’ve still got you all over me”
The chorus is a series of simple phrases which tell the whole story of the relationship and post-relationship struggles: “I lived, I learned, had you got burned/ held out and held on, God knows too long/ wasted time, lost tears, swore that I’d get out of here/ but no amount of freedom gets you clean, I’ve still got you all over me’.
As I watched the Folklore–esque lyric video, I was reminded, perhaps slightly strangely, of that tumblr textpost that analysed the most common sentences in Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight, and found that they read like abstract poetry. You know the one I mean.
Fearless: then and now
With these ‘From the Vault’ songs, Swift is able to have slightly more creative license than with her other re-records as they’ve never been heard before. With this track, this meant including long-standing friend, Maren Morris, in backing vocals. Morris was one of Swift’s surprise guests on her reputation tour where they dueted her hit ‘The Middle’.
“however much a genius she was for her age back then, she is even better now”
She also includes new friends on this single with Aaron Dessner, who co-wrote and produced sister albums Folklore and Evermore, on the production of this track. His influence on this track is most prevalent in the thin soft instrumental lines which accompany Swift’s vocals, something which was prevalent in his work on her two most recent releases which he was heavily involved with.
This latest track takes after the earlier released ‘Taylor’s Version’ of ‘Love Story’ in being vocally almost indiscriminately the same as her 2008 performance. Yet whilst it sounds very much like 17-year-old Taylor, it almost unmistakably sounds like it was written by 17-year-old Taylor. If you fell in love with the more mature Folklore era, there’s a chance it may not strike the same chord as some of her newer work. Lyrically it is still impressive, but there’s no doubt, however much a genius she was for her age back then, she is even better now.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is scheduled for release 9 April.
Aarthee Parimelalaghan
Featured image courtesy of Sebastiano Piazzi on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
Aarthee Pari
Aarthee is a second-year PPEist at The University of Oxford. She is passionate about social affairs and sharing the stories of the marginalised. Aside from politics, Aarthee is a keen musician, playing both piano and saxophone and harbours a secret dream to play the saxophone solo in Miss Saigon’s ‘Last Night of the World’.