This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Releases
Taylor Swift to release new version of Fearless album “soon”
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 12 February 2021
Taylor Swift has announced that she has finished recording the new version of her 2008 album ‘Fearless’ and will be releasing it “soon”. Probably in April. The first single, a new version of ‘Love Story’, is out now.
“‘Fearless’ was an album full of magic and curiosity, the bliss and devastation of youth”, she says in a statement posted on Twitter. “It was a diary of the adventures and explorations of a teenage girl who was learning tiny lessons with every new crack in the facade of the faitytale ending she’d been shown in the movies. I’m THRILLED to tell you that my new version of ‘Fearless’ is done and will be with you soon”.
The new version of the album, titled ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’, will also feature six songs that were written for the original record but didn’t make the cut. These were songs she “adored”, but which were “held back for different reasons”.
“Those reasons seem unnecessary now”, says Swift. “I’ve decided I want you to have the whole story, see the entire vivid picture, and let you into the entire dreamscape that is my ‘Fearless’ album … Written between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, these were the ones it killed me to leave behind”.
That does mean that the already bloated album now has 26 songs on it. The big re-record project could have been an opportunity to refine the release to the ten best tracks. But, you see, re-recording the songs was just too much fun.
“This process has been more emotional and fulfilling than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all my music”, she says. “I hope you’ll like this first outing as much as I like travelling back in time to recreate it”.
Swift, of course, isn’t really recording new versions of her old songs for fun, but actually out of spite. She embarked on the project because she was angry that her former label Big Machine – and the master recording rights in the albums she recorded for the label – were sold to Scooter Braun in 2019.
Releasing new versions of the songs does mean that she can give fans “the entire vivid picture” of her creative vision. But it also means she can license that music for use in adverts.
She is currently vetoing sync deals on her old recordings (via her control of the accompanying song rights) and the new versions will allow her to fill that gap in the market herself. In fact, the new version of ‘Love Story’, which is now available in full, was previewed in an advert last year.
Said new version is a pretty faithful recreation of the original, rather than any dramatic reimagining, which isn’t creatively very exciting but is good when it comes to sync deals. Not that I’m saying I don’t believe Swift when she says this is a creatively fulfilling project for the fans, but… actually, I think that might be what I’m saying.
Anyway, enough of that. The other thing to know about this is that, in her statement, Swift hid a weakly coded message spelling out “APRIL NINTH”, which suggests ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ will be out on 9 Apr.
