Review of Red (Taylor’s Version)

Ash Mahipat

Red (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift came out on Friday, November 12th, 2021. Before even releasing the album, it caused high excitement and anticipation worldwide. This rerecording signified Swift owning her own music again after Scooter Braun’s exploitation of her career by selling her music to someone else. Swift’s second re-recording of this album is the re-recording of her third album, Red, about her “alleged” relationship in 2010 with old flame Jake Gyllenhaal and how their three-month relationship was “like driving a new Maserati on a dead-end street. Faster than the wind, passionate as sin, ending so suddenly.” Red captures the aftermath of a relationship and all of her ups and downs and emotions after her break up with sad songs like “All Too Well,” but also happy and energetic songs like “22.” This rerecording consists of 30 songs compared to Red’s original tracklist of 16- the deluxe album having 22, which were mostly demos. The new recording included all of her old songs with the addition of the original, there will be 14 songs never heard before, aka “from the vault” songs.

 One highly anticipated song is the original “All Too Well” which was a whopping 10 minutes long! This song will not only be ten minutes (with the inclusion of the Red album version) but it will also have a short film to go with it starring Sadie Sink, Dylan O’Brien, and Taylor Swift herself! As a big Taylor Swift fan, I immediately bought her merch when it came out, just like I had done when she recorded her first rerecording of her second album, Fearless. But, I also stayed up from midnight to 1:30 am to listen to her album, not all of it, but most. I thought it was absolutely great! However, as expected, it sounded like a re-recording rather than Taylor in this emotional state of a breakup which makes sense as she’s been with her long-time boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, for 5 and a half years now. However, I felt she was so disconnected from her upbeat songs like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” and “Holy Ground.” Overall, due to bias and articles in the Rolling Stone, I’d give Red (Taylor’s Version) a 5/5 due to the lyrical masterpiece of Red capturing emotions in not only herself but others after hardships however, some emotions whilst singing were lacking, although the reasoning was very justifiable.