Two months after the release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift is readying the next installment in re-recording all of her older material. The new edition of Red, originally released in 2012, will feature “all 30 songs that were meant to go on [the album],” the singer-songwriter shares on social media. “And hey, one of them is even ten minutes long,” she adds, perhaps referencing to the never-heard version of “All Too Well.”
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Swift opens her lengthy statement with a deep reflection on how “the world is a different place for the heartbroken. It moves on a different axis, at a different speed. Time skips backwards and forwards fleetingly. The heartbroken might go through thousands of micro-emotions a day trying to figure out how to get through it without picking up the phone to hear that old familiar voice,” she says. “In the land of heartbreak, moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion are intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness. Imagining your future might always take you on a detour back to the past.”
The record that gave the world such anthems as “I Knew You Were Trouble.,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” and “22,” witnessed Swift branch out with more indie-rock and pop-infected work. Then-still straddling pop and her native country roots, her songwriting began to probe even deeper to uncover more visceral, raw layers underneath.
Looking back, Swift says “[it] resembled a heartbroken person. 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.
“Sometimes, you need to talk it over (over and over and over) for it to ever really be… over,” she continued. “Like your friend who calls you in the middle of the night going on and on about their ex, I just couldn’t stop writing.”
Red (Taylor’s Version) lands November 19.
