One of my absolute favorite days of all time was October 22, 2012. At the tumultuous age of 11, I had stayed up until midnight (even on a school night–sorry, Mom!) to buy Taylor Swift’s Red album on my iPod Touch. It was the best collection of songs I had ever heard. My best friend slept over at my house that weekend and we must have listened to “The Lucky One” on repeat at least six dozen times, but we had a long way to go before we could relate to Taylor’s exuberance about feeling “22.”
Now, as a new member of the Twenty-something Club, I (along with the same aforementioned best friend) have long awaited the re-release of Red (Taylor’s Version). In retrospect, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the album upon its original release seeing as I was prepubescent and in a very committed relationship with my middle school boyfriend, so I made sure I was fully prepared this time.
On November 12, 2021, I stayed up until midnight to listen to the album, just like I did a little over nine years ago (which is actually still a really big deal for me since I usually stick to a self-imposed 10:30 bedtime). I kicked off the evening by spending half an hour listening to “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” and then listened to the album straight through, from the beginning, as originally intended. As Taylor explained in her outro message, the original 30 songs meant for the album spoke to a wide range of emotions at a time in her life dominated by heartbreak.
The additional five minutes added to “All Too Well” (which absolutely crushed me, btw) felt like an interruption of her previous recollection of the events as a distant and mature woman who still has a difficult time remembering it all, but she maintained the same upbeat and bouncy sound we’ve all come to know and love in “Stay Stay Stay.” The return of Ed Sheeran and Gary Lightbody completed some of the album’s best works, and the feature of Phoebe Bridgers incorporated a contemporary who resembles some of Taylor’s more current work. Overall, it felt like I was listening to the album for “The Very First Night.”
I’ll admit that it almost seems like it would be a little anticlimactic to await the release of an album that has been the soundtrack to every girl’s life for the past nine years. We know the words to all the songs and besides those released From The Vault, we expect very few surprises, if any at all. However, the re-release of Red (Taylor’s Version) felt even different from the re-release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version). Red signified a stark shift from her country roots into her more pop sound that provides listeners with a sense of more meaningfulness behind some of her lyrics. The way that she was able to reclaim that work as her own is not only a move to secure the economic benefits (which would be completely valid in and of itself), but it feels like she is reclaiming and reinforcing the vulnerability she showed when the album was first released.
Even after “Everything Has Changed,” there really is “Nothing New” here: the same lyrical brilliancy, masterful collaborations, and presumably a euphoric time to be 22.