Speaking Now on Speak Now (Taylor's Version)
Long live this third godforsaken mess of a re-recording she made us.
This is Ottavia Paluch and you’re reading Things You Otter Know.
I know it’s been a month or so since I last wrote, but it felt right to return with a post I’ve wanted to write for years. There’s so way I could actually write it for years. I don’t have the work ethic for that.
Several years ago, Scooter Braun—most famous for being The Bieb’s manager, and second-most famous for being a douchebag—bought the label that released Taylor Swift’s first six albums. Which means he owns the master recordings of the songs off those albums and has control over how they’re used (i.e. licensing them for commercials and stuff). She has claimed she was never really given a chance to buy her own masters herself, and started re-recording her earlier albums so her fans could buy and stream those instead.
Now Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is here and can you believe it? Yes, yes, I can see it now!!! So after listening to this thing nonstop for 4 whole days, here are my extremely premature and slightly condensed thoughts.
The (new) old tracks!
I should start with “Mine”. Obviously.
On midnight Friday, I pressed play and immediately went into shock. When it was hard to take, yes, yes, this is what I thought about: WOW WHAT A SONG. The “uhh-iiiii-iiiii” thing at the start! What an iconic way to start an album. Did you see her play it on piano a few weeks ago? Here, I’ll show you. It was beautiful. I would kill for a studio version:
You could easily make the argument that “Mine” may be her very best opening track to any album. Yeah yeah I know “Fearless” and “State of Grace” and “willow” exist, but “Mine” is special. Especially because back in 2010 it made people realize she hadn’t lost a step lyric-wise since Fearless. Actually, she had probably gained a few steps. That one line everyone quotes, “you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” is a hall of fame Taylor Swift line and for good reason. She’s never said more with fewer words.
The new version of “Sparks Fly” made me cry a teeny little bit the first time I heard it at 12:03 A.M. on Friday. Very embarrassing to admit but I will admit it to you anyway because I promised long ago to be honest on here.
Sometimes when I’m walking home from campus I’ll shout this song over the traffic hum. It’s maybe the happiest song Taylor’s ever made. Though nowhere near her best musically or lyrically, it’s a firecracker in its’ own way, an overwhelming country-power-pop rush of euphoria and young love. A Hallmark movie personified.
That mostly holds true for this new version. It’s fuller and sharper, but also sadder. There’s organ pumped in and the little keyboard stabs I loved so much in the bridge aren’t as prominent. It doesn’t sound as lively as before. Like a lot of these new re-recorded songs, it memorializes, reminisces on that rush of youth and young love, rather than trying to fulfill the impossible task of truly capturing it.
You look at something like the new “Back to December,” famously the song where she apologizes to the extremely good-looking Taylor Lautner for not being a good enough girlfriend. She does a decent job conveying the emotion behind her mistakes in this new version. But the sadness is more generic than genuine, save for the bridge. It sure doesn’t seem like she really goes back to December all the time. She probably hasn’t been back there since 2011.
The title track isn’t anyone’s favourite but Taylor really approached it with fresh eyes here. When she re-recorded “Hey Stephen,” which was also coincidentally a track four of a different album, it felt like an attempt to be super-duper faithful to the original without adding any new sonic ideas. All of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) was like that, honestly. Usually that’s a good thing but a song as fun as “Hey Stephen” demands more confidence rather than stiffness. Luckily, the new “Speak Now” is genuinely fun! Super light and airy and playful. An improvement from the original for sure. Got some nice stacks and stuff. Her adlibs are great.
And then…*deep breath*…we get to “Dear John”. When those re-recorded Mayer-esque guitars rang out Friday night—dear reader, I got shivers. Here is what I wrote about the song early last year:
…the bridge is absolutely phenomenal. And for John Mayer to call Taylor’s lyrics “lazy” is pathetic. Especially because John Mayer, though not without a few killer tunes, is also responsible for “Your Body Is A Wonderland,” which is like if a piece of twenty-year-old chewing gum stuck to the underside of a table was a song.
That’s one of my favourite paragraphs I’ve ever written for this Substack, so I couldn’t not include it.
Now, a few weeks ago on tour Taylor performed this song for the first time in YEARS. (I know, I couldn’t believe it either! I honestly thought she’d never sing it again) She also made a speech asking fans not to cyberbully John Mayer the way they did to Jake Gyllenhaal when the ten-minute “All Too Well” came out. Perhaps because she knew Jake could handle the attention in ways John definitely will not. The problem is she knows and we all know her fans have their own agency. We’re gonna make fun of John Mayer whether John Mayer likes it or not. (Screw John Mayer.)
Regardless, here is most of her speech:
“I’m putting this album out because I want to own my music, and I believe that anyone who has the desire to own their music should be able to. I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19 except the songs I wrote and the memories we made together. So what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not putting this album out so that you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 million years ago.”
She’s right and she should say it.
If anything, I hope “Dear John” gets recognized by the greater culture just for being the objective masterpiece it is, Mayer idiocy aside. In the liner notes Taylor calls it her most scathing song. In certain moments it can make “All Too Well” feel like “Shake It Off.” The original had so much anger and frustration; the new version holds a lot more sadness and disappointment. You can feel her hurt. The high notes are so much stronger than in the original. The guitars have even more bite than they did before.
There’s always been a lot of attention put towards the fact that Speak Now was written solely by Taylor. It’s a ridiculous achievement; I totally get why she mentions it as often as she does. It’s insane how she wrote this song at 19. I’m 19 and I couldn’t write anything this good.
Every line is fraught with trauma. The switch from “I should’ve known” to “you should’ve known” still blows me away.
Rarely has a gut punch been more gutpunchy than “the girl in the dress wrote you…a…song.”
And could any fan be meaner to John than Taylor when she sings, “Don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be messed with?”
The whole thing is a special piece of work, the definite thesis statement of this re-recording. Sure, the bruises and scars aren’t as raw as they once were, but she’s here to let you know they haven’t disappeared, thank you very much.
Speak Now is also notable because it’s the first one Taylor wrote as a full-fledged A-list celebrity. Fearless had won AOTY at the Grammys and had become the most-awarded country album ever—imagine the pressure to follow that up with something even more critically and commercially successful. Songs like “Mean,” about a critic who panned a performance she did on the Grammys, are what make this album her very first attempt at responding to very, very public narratives about herself.
Taylor has never addressed her critics as simply or plainly as she does here. It’s the absolute baseline by which all her other “you’re wrong!” songs can be measured up against. So…not great, but back then served as another leap forward both songwriting and maturity-wise. It’s kind of cool to hear an older and more confident Taylor singing this song again and singing it THIS WELL, especially when she has a line about how the critic in question is “drunk and grumbling on about how [she] can’t sing.” Yet at the same time, the brattiness of her voice on the original album is part of what sold some of those songs, especially the weaker ones. Her heart’s just not in it as much this time around.
Granted, we shouldn’t judge people for choosing to listen to the original versions of these albums. I honestly just do it for the sake of doing it. It isn’t like you’re not a feminist if you stream the old versions—hell, Taylor herself is the poster-girl for a very stock-photo type of feminism she really only employs when it’s convenient for her. But for many Swifties, it’ll be hard to hard to part with the original Speak Now if they choose to, because of how much older it is and also how much younger it feels.
Take the new version of “The Story of Us,” a clear reminder that Taylor Alison Swift has grown up, ladies and gents and non-binary friends. She’s no longer a precocious 20-year old. She’s 33 (and still growing up now). The twang that was once so prominent is gone. We’ll get used to it but it’s still a big adjustment, perhaps the biggest of this entire re-recording.
There is a bit of an upside to this: hearing her go feral on an outro the way she does on “The Story of Us” is fun as hell and she should really do it more. Who doesn’t lose their mind every time they see a clip of her doing “Don’t Blame Me” on tour?! She’s totally capable of pulling something like that off more often. I bet it’d shut a lot of people up.
Speaking of really great vocal performances, can we talk about “Never Grow Up?” for a second? And only for a second because I’m listening to it as I write this paragraph and I can’t really listen to this song without tearing up. It’s so interesting to hear her sing it at the extremely advanced age she is currently in—okay! Moving on!
“Enchanted”! What a great song. Definitely gives “I wrote this as a teenager,” but it’s so sincere and charming and sweet. And screamable.
The guy from Owl City inspired it. You know, the “Fireflies” dude? He’s like if you took all of my most annoying qualities and turned them up to an 11.
Speak Now also is the start of a long-running dialogue between Taylor’s celebrity persona and her confessional songwriting. It’s her speaking—screaming—to be taken seriously as an artist. That she isn’t a manufactured pop girlie or a product of a factory. A clear example? “Better Than Revenge”. One of the pettiest, hardest-going songs in Taylor’s discography. I love pop-rock Taylor so much. We need a full-on rock album from her. She’d crush that.
This new version of the song has been very divisive. I love the robotic voices in the back. But it also sounds hollow, like it’s missing a guitar or two ;the exact opposite of the problem with the new “The Story of Us”). In general there’s just a little less sass and a little less brattiness than before.
She’s also revamped a line in the chorus. If you’re not a Taylor fan that might seem like a trivial thing to fuss over, but it’s actually something that has got a lot of attention both within and outside of the fandom: “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” has become “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches”.
Is that a bar?
No idea. I guess???
I will concur it has an elegance the old one didn’t have.
I understand the intent behind this decision, and I’m not surprised she decided to change it. Like, she’s 33! It would be especially hard for her to sing the old line now without serious repercussions. Yeah, there’s a part (or maybe “part” isn’t strong enough of a word!) of the fandom that wishes she could’ve kept the line the way it was. But she is a self-described pathological people pleaser. A human being. One who’s very focused on how new audiences take in her music—perhaps too focused, and to her own detriment.
Look at me, for instance. There have been and will be lines I write here on this Substack I’ll regret writing a few years from now. For all I know, I might regret the opinions I express in this very post. There are poems I wrote when I was 14, 15—REALLY bad ones, too!—that are freely available and accessible on the Internet if you simply Google my name, but that I definitely regret choosing to publish. (I pulled them from the list of publications on my website, but the Internet lasts forever.) I even regret choosing not to use a pen name, but that’s a story for another time. If I was as famous as Taylor and had the power to pull all my cringeworthy teenage writing (and ny name, too) off the Internet, I might do it.
But then there’s also an idea my friend Aidan shared with me once:
at one time [that old poem] was a part of you, and now that it exists in the world it has become a part of someone else. you may have gotten older and distanced yourself from that poem or who you were when you wrote it, but that doesn’t change that you wrote it and it was at one point a being of your mind you were able to gift the world.
Regardless of the Taylor drama, that’s great advice. (Aidan is wonderful. Go read their poems.)
Many say this lyric change undermines the integrity of the re-recording project. Songs are nothing if not a moment in time. And guess who else has a problematic song they wrote as a teenager? Paramore! (Who we’ll get to later.) Paramore still performs “Misery Business” live despite its anti-feminist sentiment. Though it is their biggest hit. You wish it didn't go so hard, but it does.
So “Better Than Revenge” sits in a different spot in Taylor’s discography than “Misery Business” does in Paramore’s. “Better Than Revenge” is a deep cut from an under-appreciated album. You don’t go to a Taylor show to hear it. Like, you understandably hope and pray it’s one of the surprise songs, but you know the bulk of the set is for the hits, the honesty, the heart-on-sleeve songwriting. The original line captures that ethos in a way the new one doesn’t. And with a career and output as heavily analyzed as Taylor’s, there was no way this line change was going to go unnoticed. She would get criticized no matter what.
Such a change also doesn’t fix the core problem of the song—Taylor holding a woman accountable for the wrongdoing of a man. Despite being sexually suggestive, the line that was changed wasn’t even the meanest line of the song. When she sings, “No amount of vintage dresses can give you dignity”—that’s a bar and a half! And it went totally untouched.
Now, my friend Aria compares the 1-2 punch of “Better Than Revenge” into “Innocent” to taking a line of coke and then getting shot in the face.
I myself have little to say about “Innocent". I imagine Taylor was rolling her eyes in the vocal booth recording this thing.
It’s always rubbed me the wrong way because of its attachment to Kanye West. It’s a beautiful song about mental health but only when you take Kanye out of the equation, and I have long struggled to do that. Kanye West doesn’t want nor deserve an apology from Taylor. Screw him.
Another dimension to this re-recording is for better or for worse, the new parts are more noticeable than any of the flourishes (if any) on the re-recorded Fearless and Red. The drums are punchier, Taylor’s vocals are crisp, and the male backing vocals have been pushed way down because Taylor no longer needs a ton of backup to propel her vocal takes a la Jon Bon Jovi.
Which brings me to the new “Haunted.” It sounds HUGE. Genuinely one of her most underrated songs, with one of her most underrated melodies. It’s such an outlier because of how it ratchets up the drama to a 15. Always loved those violins. Incredible how many great hooks and toplines and one-line zingers an 18-20 year old Taylor came up with.
I’ll touch briefly on the last two songs. Taylor calls “Last Kiss” the saddest song she’s ever written, which is irrefutably untrue because “You’re Losing Me” exists. But she really brings the emotion in this new version her takes in other songs lacked. The bridge is gorgeous. Sometimes I forget how sad it is until I’m at the part where she says “You can plan for a change in the weather and time, but I never planned on you changing your mind”. God! Just TYPING that made me sad!
Finally, “Long Live,” Taylor’s ode to the fans. How many songwriters have written odes to their fans?
Like, you think Drake would—could—do that? The last song he dropped as of writing has a line that goes, “Don’t know how to express my love, that’s why I American Express my love for you.” Shut up, Aubrey.
ANYWAYS. Enough about him. The new “Long Live” is pretty faithful to the original. It’s not a song I regularly seek out, like, I never catch myself going “I need to listen to ‘Long Live’ or I’ll be long dead.” It works best and hits hardest when you listen to Speak Now the way it was intended. On a good night it can make you cry.
The Vault tracks!
Part of the whole re-recording project has been re-recording songs she wrote during the original era that never made the final cut for whatever reason My expectations were sky-high after how incredible the Red Vault was, and I was a little disappointed in the Speak Now Vault.
“Electric Touch” feat. Fall Out Boy - So basic. Should rock way harder than it does. The hook annoys me. Patrick Stump’s voice has started to annoy me, too, which is shocking to type out because Fall Out Boy used to be one of my favourite bands growing up.
“When Emma Falls In Love” - I have no idea what “Like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town” means, but the clunk of that line pales in comparison to “Emma met a boy with eyes like a man”. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN, TAYLOR?! BE SO FOR REAL.
“I Can See You” - I’m of the ilk that wishes Taylor would stop working with Jack Antonoff, but this is kind of a bop? It definitely suggests Jack and Taylor can do something new and fresh and exciting together. It’s so different. So…dirty!
“Castles Crumbling” (feat. Hayley Williams) - Super mellow, average lyrically. More along the lines of Hayley’s solo stuff than that signature Paramore sound.
(This does not mean Hayley’s solo stuff sucks because it absolutely does not. This also does not mean the album Paramore put out earlier this year sucks because it absolutely does not - like, have you heard “Liar”? One of my favourite songs of the year so far.)
“Foolish One” - I feel like she wrote this song after stalking me for three years on the Internet.
“Timeless” - A perfect closer because of how quintessentially Speak Now it is. Has a great concept but is SO WORDY. It would've taken 15 Nashville writers to come up with a bridge half as dense. I wouldn’t go as far to say it’s an all-time Taylor song like some have suggested, but at its’ core it’s a true songwriter’s song—a testament to her ability to tap into the mundane parts and people that make up her life, and make all of it feel universal to the listener.
Last kiss word!
It might seem odd for me to be SO excited to hear new version of new songs I already know and love. But people are responding to these Taylor’s Versions in ways no one was expecting, not even Taylor herself, and it’s why I felt the need to talk about Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) at length. Plus, I love Taylor, if you couldn’t tell.
What I find incredibly interesting, as someone who is fascinated by how music infiltrates the culture (or doesn’t!), is how Taylor’s fanbase is bigger than it’s ever been, even when she’s been around since 2006 and society tends to stop giving runway to female pop stars after they turn 30.
One of my favourite writers, Tom Breihan of Stereogum (who I’ve mentioned before), argues every major pop star goes through a period he calls their imperial phrase. Like Katy Perry with Teenage Dream or Adele with 21, when both were at their commercial and critical peak. Most would argue Taylor’s imperial phase was during the 1989 era, her first full-fledged pop album and her first full-fledged masterpiece.
But then last year Midnights just completely took over the world (and I’m still not sure if it was truly worthy of breaking all those streaming records and everything—maybe I’m just frustrated evermore never got its due). Now there are a lot of people who wouldn’t call themselves Swifties but will end up succumbing to the hype and algorithm push and choose to listen to this album.
It’s safe to say we’re at peak Taylormania right now. I don’t get the sense her career is stalling because she keeps revisiting these old songs. In a way, it’s made things even more exciting for us as diehard fans. And it’s also letting her introduce older music to younger fans who hadn’t even been convinced when reputation was first conceived.
Yet more so than on Fearless and Red, as good as those albums and Vaults are, the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) has been especially, profoundly validating for those of us who got attached to this music a long time ago. Speak Now is a lot of things, these new Taylor’s Versions are a lot of things, but this re-recording truly feel like it was made for the fans. For the people with early and longstanding connection with Taylor. The kids who are going to see her live after having grown up on her music. It’s for all of us now.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts on the album and also on my thoughts on the album. I’m dying to know, is it killing you like it’s killing me?
I will end with this tweet from our Prime Minister, one of the few correct things he has ever tweeted.
I’ll see you when I Can See You,
🦦 —O— 🦦
Very nice, now can we get "Speaking Now on Speak Now (Taylor's Version) (Ottavia's Version)"