At midnight on October 27, Taylor Swift released the long-anticipated rerecording of her fifth studio album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and she’s adding some extra goodies along with the usual track listing. For instance, there are five tracks subtitled (From the Vault) that include “‘Slut!’,” “Say Don’t Go,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” and “Suburban Legends.”
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The last song from The Vault includes a lyric video, which Swift released as well. “Is It Over Now?” was written in 2014 with Jack Antonoff, and it focuses on a failed relationship, possible infidelity, getting over someone, and fast-forwarding through the awkward stages of a new relationship. The lyric video is a simple production, with the lyrics appearing on a blue, shifting, wave-like background.
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The From the Vault tracks were announced with a global Google Search puzzle game, launched in late September, as well as a teaser video for the “Slut!” track. The puzzle began with the search term “Taylor Swift” and included 89 puzzles to solve. They included mostly word scrambles, which would take fans to the next puzzle once the answer was typed into the search bar. The goal was a global total of 33 million puzzles, but this was no challenge for Swifties. Fans managed to solve all the puzzles within a day, opening the vault and releasing the bonus tracks.
Swifties were so adamant about solving the puzzles, they actually crashed Google for a little bit. Some of the puzzles weren’t showing up for some fans, and Google posted on its X (formerly Twitter) page at the time, “Swifties, the vault is jammed! But don’t worry, there are no blank spaces inside. We’re in our fix-it era and will be out of the woods soon,” cleverly referencing multiple Swift songs.
The vault eventually opened, and fans got their bonus tracks, with the announcement of “‘Slut!'” coming via Swift’s social media. Fans have been waiting for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) for a while either way, as Swift was initially sued in 2017 by the group 3LW for allegedly sampling lyrics from their song “Playas Gon’ Play” in “Shake It Off.” The lawsuit stated that “Shake It Off” was too similar to “Playas Gon’ Play,” but Swift declared that she had never heard the song and phrases like “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” are part of the common vernacular. Eventually, in 2022, the lawsuit was dropped by both sides.
Now, with 1989 (Taylor’s Version) finally here, Swifties can rest easy for a while. At least, until Swift announces the next Taylor’s Version.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
