The day Taylor Swift fans have been waiting for has arrived – TSwift’s plan to release re-recordings of her first six albums is in motion. And, in what has now become true Taylor fashion, the big announcement comes less than 24 hours before the release!
“I’m so excited to share with you that tonight at midnight I’ll be putting out my version of my song ‘Love Story,’ which was originally on my album, Fearless,” Taylor announced on Good Morning America Thursday (February 11).
But that’s not all – she also gave an update on the re-recording her 2008 album, Fearless. And she’s adding a sweet surprise for fans.
“I’ve now finished re-recording all of Fearless, which will be coming out soon. My version of Fearless will have 26 songs on it because I’ve decided to add songs from the vault, which are songs that almost made the original Fearless album,” she added. “I’ve now gone back and recorded those, so that everybody will be able to hear, not only the songs that made the album, but the songs that almost made it. The full picture.”
The new re-recorded version of Fearless will be called Fearless (Taylor’s Version). After debuting a sneak peek of the album cover on GMA, Taylor also went on social media to sharing it as well.
“I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon. It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault. Love Story (Taylor’s Version) will be out tonight,” she wrote on Instagram.
She also shared a lengthy message to her fans reflecting on her Fearless era.
“This was the musical era in which so many inside jokes were created between us, so many hugs exchanged and hands touched, so many unbreakable bonds formed,” she wrote. “So before I say anything else, let me just say that it was a real honor to get to be a teenager alongside you, and for those of you I’ve come to know more recently than 2008, I am ecstatic that I’ll get to experience a bit of that feeling with you in the very near future. Now that I can fully appreciate it in its whimsical, effervescent, chaotic entirety.”
She went on to describe her album as “full of magic and curiosity, the bliss and devastation of youth,” and noted that “it was the diary of the adventures and explorations of a teenage girl who was learning tiny lessons with every new crack in the facade of the fairytale ending she’d been shown in the movies.”
Taylor previously revealed her decision to re-record her first six albums after the master recordings were sold by her former label – something she touched on again in her message.
“The way I’ve chosen to do this will hopefully help illuminate where I’m coming from,” she continued. “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really *knows* that body of work.”
She also went on to share the reason behind adding re-recordings of the six previously unreleased songs: “For example, only I know which songs I wrote that almost made the Fearless album. Songs I absolutely adored, but were held back for different reasons (don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too many down tempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical CD).”
Deciding to give fans “the whole story, see the entire vivid picture, and let you into the entire dreamscape that is my Fearless album,” she’s including the six songs – written when she was between 16 and 18 – which were “the ones it killed me to leave behind.”
“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all of my music,” she wrote. “I hope you’ll like this first outing as much as I liked traveling back in time to recreate it.”
And because Tay is the Queen of Easter Eggs, eagle-eyed fans noticed how everything was typed in lower case with just the occasional capital letter. Putting the capitalized letters together appears to spell a hidden message: “APRIL NINTH,” which is believed to be the release date of Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
