Thirteen years ago, Taylor Swift opened her song “Love Story” with a memory: “We were both young when I first saw you”, the precocious country star, then aged 18, sang on the lead single from her album “Fearless” by 2008, “I close my eyes and the flashback begins.”
Now she is remembering that memory – and her memory is very close to the total.
On Thursday night, Swift, now 31 and one of the biggest pop bands in the world, released a re-recorded version of “Love Story” with the theme Romeo and Juliet as the first sample of a highly anticipated review of “Fearless” on April 9th. -produced by singer and Chris Rowe (a longtime Nashville studio professional who worked on the first Swift records) and featuring several musicians who played on the original, the new “Love Story” – officially titled “Love Story (Taylor version ) ”- is virtually indistinguishable from the version that gave Swift his first hit in the top 10.
Desirous vocals, captivating violin, edifying tone change – it’s all here, just as she left it.
This loyalty is intentional, of course. Infuriated by the purchase of his old Big Machine label by music executive Scooter Braun in 2019, Swift said that year that he planned to re-record his first six albums as a way to potentially lower the value of Braun’s recently made master recordings, known among other things for his work with Swift’s longtime enemy, Kanye West. (Ownership of an artist’s masters, which is typical of a major record label, is what allows the record company to profit from sales and flows and control the use of the artist’s music in films, television and commercials.)
Last year, Braun sold the Swift catalog to Shamrock Capital, a Westwood-based investment fund, for more than $ 300 million. According to the singer, Shamrock offered to work with her, but she declined when she learned that Braun would maintain a financial interest in her music. In a letter he posted on Twitter, Swift told Shamrock’s partners that he intended to re-record his old songs – the idea was that his new versions would replace the original ones on the market.
So, why redo “Fearless”, your second studio album, first? In a way, it is his most successful LP, having sold over 10 million copies and won four Grammy awards, including the album of the year.
But any Swift superfan would also recognize the importance of his famous lucky number, 13, at the moment.
The new edition of “Fearless” – think of it as the album director’s version – will feature 26 songs, including unreleased cuts that she wrote around the same time as “Love Story” and hits like “Fifteen” and “You Belong With Me. “In a statement, Swift said that” Fearless “chronicled” the adventures and explorations of a teenager who was learning little lessons with each new crack in the facade of the fairytale ending she had shown in the movies. “
In a way, the fidelity of the new “Love Story” is a disappointment. Swift’s pair of 2020 albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore” – the first is running for five awards, including next month’s Grammy album of the year – are full of adult reflections on romance and commitment; a song by “Evermore”, the amazing “Tolerate It”, seems to be narrated by a woman trapped in a loveless marriage.
He longs to know what she can do with the dazzling idealism of “Love Story”. But to deviate too much from the original would be to jeopardize the chance of a music supervisor licensing that version instead of the one that Shamrock has.
Does that make the whole company seem more calculating than we want to believe pop stars are? If so, give Swift credit for talking about his relationship with Braun in totally emotional terms – “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work,” she said when he bought the Big Machine – which turned a business conflict into a battle for art.
The same is true of how she is framing her “Fearless” remake – a process, she said Thursday, that “was more fulfilling and emotional than I could have imagined and made me even more determined to re-record all my songs ”.
Do not doubt that she will make it.