One of the fundamental rules in films on time travel is to avoid doing things that cause a fracture in the space-time continuum. The plots that move between past, present and future make us understand how fragile are the choices we make. Take Taylor Swift, who in 2021 began to build an alternative reality by re-regulating the first six studio albums to regain possession of the ownership of his music. The implicit question was: and if you could do everything from the end, but on the big one?
With the support of a fanbase ready to follow her everywhere, Swift has found itself faced with infinite possibilities. It was certainly not the first to redo their songs to claim the property, but it was the first to do it on a large scale. The songs have become weapons in what she herself called “the struggle of my life”. The re-registrations were therefore born as a way elaborated to devalue the originals and show that their value was above all in the author. In the end, Swift had its happy ending and now owns all the songs she wrote. But the truth is that the original recordings will always be better than the Taylor's Version. Every detail tells the story that the artist feared to lose when his catalog ended up in the wrong hands. And every little modification he made in the new versions ended up to rewrite the story.
Swift has made changes that have to do with the structures, but above all with the strategy. Let's take Fearless (Taylor's Version)the first album of the series of re-registrations. With it it also came out If This was a movie (Taylor's Version)trace number five of the EP The More Fearless (Taylor's Version). However, the original version of the song had come out two years later Fearless and was contained in the deluxe edition of Speak Now. There will have been no fracture in the space-time continuum, but in essence Swift has reorganized the time, which is not insignificant for an artist who meticulously takes care of the order of the pieces in the albums. Swift was able to touch up the past with the perspective gained years after the album release.
If this was a movie It was also the only song of the Deluxe of Speak Now To include a co-author, Martin Johnson of the Boys Like Girls. When the Taylor's Version Of Speak Now The song was not there. Swift explained that she wrote the album “completely alone, between 18 and 20 years old”. In 2010 he said he did it to demonstrate that he is the architect of his own success. «The songs born at that time were characterized by brutal honesty, diaristic confessions without filters and great melancholy. It tells a story of growth, falls, flights and crashes … and to survive to be able to tell it ». That only song written in collaboration with another author would certainly not have denied his thesis, but belonged to a different narrative line and therefore put it aside.
Despite many words on brutal honesty and confessions without filters, Swift did not resist the instinct to cleanse things here and there. The most obvious change concerns Better Than Revenge (Taylor's Version). The new version changes the verse “She's Better Known for the Things That She Does On the Matteress” (“is more famous for the things he does on the mattress”). As far as they are mild in that context, those words clashed with the image of the sweet queen of country-pop. The change removes an essential element to understand how its history intertwines with feminism and misogyny, an aspect of its story that has inspired university courses. Maybe today it wouldn't say it anymore, but in his time his truth was.
For Red (Taylor's Version) Swift did the exact opposite. In the 10 -minute version of All Too Well He says many more things, no less. Is the verse “Fuck the Patriarchy” subject to controversy: did he really write it at the time or is it just a way to give a better and updated response to years later? Do you bring the future to the past means to cheat? Perhaps. But there were no rules on what she was doing, she wrote her. When Max Martin and other producers of Red And 1989 They decided not to participate in the re-registrations, the new versions were made with Christopher Rowe and Jack Antronoff. But as happened for Speak Now (Taylor's Version)many productive choices in remakes have largely buried the storm of emotions of the originals.
It could be objected that, after all, it is not so important. The original versions still exist and fans can create custom playlists by combining the versions they prefer. And however until Swift resumed possession of their music, it was thought that it would not be necessary to return to the originals. After Fearless And as his sound has become more complex, it has become increasingly difficult to react the spirit of the moment in every new release. Swift's voice has changed as much as she has. No more fake country accent. An evident emotional detachment in its revisited catalog is perceived, a distance between the melodrama of memories and the faded filter through which she thinks them back today.
Swift has always communicated with the fans through hidden clues and intricate messages and therefore knows how much the tiny and apparently insignificant details count. He admitted it when he revealed that, at the moment, he recorded less than 25% of Reputation (Taylor's Version). «It is very close to that period of my life and every time I tried to do it again, I blocked myself. It is the only album among the first six that I thought could not be improved by remaking it ». The fragment of Look What you make me do (Taylor's Version) appeared in an episode of The Handmaid's Such It is proof of this. It is only a taste, but it is enough to make it clear that it would take an Ouija table to recall the spirit of the old Taylor: only she would be able to sing it in the right way.
In its Swift records it evokes emotions in very particular ways. It is evident when it takes all of itself and when not. It can be heard in the deep folds of the original recordings. And the absence in the remakes is warned. The great strength of Swift as a performer is that, when you sing something, believe them. That's why Reputation It is such a personal album. The fact that, at that moment, struggled to be believed was an integral part of the album. How can that feeling of being the most hated person on the planet find that is one of the most loved? And why should he want to want it?
The Eras Tour was the only place where there were no differences between originals and Taylor's Versionhe was singing all together, each with his favorite. Some discovered Swift music when it was now considered a betrayal to listen to the stolen versions, as fans call them. The emotions that are old and worn for her, for them they could be new. That is their version. Others have coexisted with those words for years and know exactly what is missing when they listen to the remakes in the car or in the headphones.
In the films it is at this point that the credits flow, where Swift could sing: “Nothing's Gonna Change, Not for Me and You”. By the way, while you read these words which version do you feel?
From Rolling Stone Us.
