Red (Taylor's Version)
After rerecording her 2008 album *Fearless* as part of a sweeping effort to regain control of her master tapes—or at least create new ones—Taylor Swift presents *Red (Taylor’s Version)*, an expanded take on her 2012 blockbuster that features nine never-before-released songs written in the same era as the original. “Musically and lyrically, *Red* resembled a heartbroken person,” she wrote in a letter to fans. “It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past. Like trying on pieces of a new life, I went into the studio and experimented with different sounds and collaborators. And I’m not sure if it was pouring my thoughts into this album, hearing thousands of your voices sing the lyrics back to me in passionate solidarity, or if it was simply time, but something was healed along the way.” The hot-blooded breakup anthems you know and love are still there (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” are two), but the new, full collection paints an even richer portrait of heartbreak. She wrestles with change on “Nothing New,” an alt-rock duet with Phoebe Bridgers; contemplates fate on a wistful pop song produced by Max Martin and Shellback (“Message in a Bottle”); and gets the final, piercing word on “I Bet You Think About Me” featuring Chris Stapleton, penned after a high-profile breakup in 2011. Longtime fans will be especially glad to see an extended cut of “All Too Well,” the project’s emotional centerpiece. It features new production from hitmaker Jack Antonoff, but Swift’s original lyrical genius is still remarkable. “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise/So casually cruel in the name of being honest,” she sings. It’s the line she’s always said she’s most proud of from this album and era. Ten years on, it still cuts deep.
Re-recorded in meticulous detail, along with a dozen songs cut from the 2012 original, Taylor Swift’s most pivotal album has still more to say about growing up and moving forward.
Taylor Swift’s second re-recorded album is a potent return to her Red era, but with notable updates
The second of Taylor Swift's re-recorded albums, Red (Taylor's Version) comes as a package that balances fan service alongside an insightful documentation of one of modern pop’s best songwriters at a key juncture in her career.
In the latest instalment of Taylor Swift's re-recording project, the epic new version of 'All Too Well' steals the show
If the matte crimson lipstick she wore in the original artwork represented its sound, then imagine it now with an added touch of lipgloss and liner – perhaps that shade brighter, the jawline beneath it more determined
The second in a series of catalog re-recordings and revisions, Red [Taylor's Version] finds Taylor Swift revisiting her self-styled pop breakthrough Red.
Don’t meddle with a masterpiece they say. But what happens when someone peddles your masterpiece? When someone you have zero respect for buys and sells your work and could continue to profit from it for many years to come? This is essentially what happened to Taylor Swift when the masters to her early albums released on Big Machine were sold without her having any say in the matter.
Listening to Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ is, Clash imagines, the same feeling that parents get when reading
With ‘Red (Taylor’s Version),’ Taylor Swift displays a surprising willingness to kill—or at least revise—her darlings. Read our review.
'Red (Taylor’s Version') is both an Intellectual Property strategy tool and a prolepsis of the status that the 2012 album will uphold in the future.
Swift re-records the 2012 album on which she first embraced synth-pop, tweaking songs and adding others: a mix of saccharine fluff and superb keepers
Taylor Swift - Red (Taylor’s Version) review: Reflecting and re-evaluating: Red is an absolute triumph.