Taylor Swift: ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ Review
8.8
GENRE: Pop/Country
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2021No matter how much people try, Taylor Swift will always find ways to escape the traps they set up for her. Most of the time, she does it through music. In 2010, she made the debut performance of “Innocent” at the MTV’s Video Music Awards—the song redeemed Kanye West from their 2009 incident on that very same stage; it was also part of Speak Now, an album written all by herself—a slap in the face of those who, at the time, claimed she was talentless. In 2017, she released the megahit “Look What You Made Me Do” as the lead single from reputation. The number one song was a response to, supposedly, a lot of people: Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Kanye, and, not surprisingly, the Kardashians. In 2019, Swift took it to Instagram to announce that her old buddy, Scott Borchetta, who was also the president of the label she was signed to, had sold the masters of her six studio albums without offering her a chance to buy them. In a Swiftian twist of events, she promised to re-record the material and re-release the albums, which at first sounded kooky, but hey, at that point, it was unwise to underestimate her.
Almost two years, two albums, and a new Grammy for Album of the Year later, Swift has released Fearless (Taylor’s Version), inferring that THIS is the version fans should listen to. Back in 2008, the original Fearless stirred up album sales and earned Swift her first Grammy for Album of the Year, alongside dozens of other awards. The album’s success came from Swift’s ability to connect with teenagers the way no other female pop singer did at the time: Lady Gaga was focused on club bangers, Beyoncé was empowering single ladies, Katy Perry was… well, doing campy, Katy Perry stuff. Swift made music for the underdogs, the insecure, the ones who watched other people have fun from afar. “You Belong With Me” became an anthem for this crowd. “Fifteen” became their mantra. On Fearless (Taylor’s Version), these beloved tracks lose a bit of their original glow, which was expected—imagine being 31 and trying to sound truthful while singing about being 15, or recreating a Nashville twang you no longer possess. But that opens space for more obscure cuts to shine, and tracks like “Forever and Always,” “You’re Not Sorry,” and “Tell Me Why” get a new breath of life with the new Taylor’s Versions.
Swift and producer Christopher Rower excel at replicating most of the arrengements of Fearless with its fiddles, cellos, and cymbals; almost all new versions sound no different than the originals and even hardcore fans will have some difficulty spotting differences. “Love Story” comes out unscathed, with her vocals sounding as meaningful as they did back in the day, albeit her timbre is a little deeper now. Resignifying the art she made thirteen years ago attaches a multitude of new connotations to it. It makes a huge difference when you’re “asking to be taken to a place where you can be alone” to Joe Alwyn, with whom she keeps a private relationship, and not to a guy you never actually dated. When she sings, “So close your eyes/Escape this town for a little while,” she foregrounds her more mature voice, making it the most noticeable sign that time has passed. Originally a reclaim of ownership, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) moves from business stunt into a celebration of Swift’s longevity and premature talent, and even its subtle flaws are easily forgiven.
The thing with Taylor Swift is that she always keeps fans entertained, attentive, craving for more. With Fearless (Taylor’s Version), they put their hands on her creative leftovers, a reward for years of loyalty. Swift opens the vault, where six songs that didn’t make the cut on 2008’s Fearless have been stored all these years. “You All Over Me,” featuring country singer Marris Morren, was produced by Aaron Dessner, whose hands were behind folklore and evermore. You can barely hear his influence on the track, and the same goes for Morren’s voice. But Dessner’s task was to reimagine a country song written in 2008 and include it on an album with no space for experimental airy beats; therefore, he succeeded. “No amount of freedom gets you clean,” Swift sings, drawing a parallel with her 2014’s track “Clean.” Did she alter this song to make this reference intentional, or is her mind just this big of a puzzle?
The same question is pertinent to “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” where Swift drops a reference to “All Too Well” from 2012’s Red—just another one of the many crossovers throughout Swift’s long-spanning career. “Mister casually cruel,” she backhandedly shades who, according to her investigative Reddit fans, could be Joe Jonas, who dated Swift in 2008—the Jonas brother and his wife Sophie Turner promoted the song on Instagram, so even if the song is about him, it’s all good. “Mr. Perfectly Fine” has the gooey innocence of the original tracks on Fearless, with sore lyrics like “I've been pickin’ up my heart, he's been pickin’ up her” subdued by Jack Antonoff’s saccharine production with upbeat drums and rock-inspired guitars. “We Were Happy,” another Dessner-produced song featuring backing vocals from country titan Keith Urban, resembles Swift’s most recent line of work with electric guitars and synthesizers. Urban reappears on “That’s When,” where Swift sings about needing some space over an electric organ.
As its title suggests, Swift waves goodbye with closing track “Bye Bye Baby,” recapitulating recurring themes on Fearless (Taylor’s Version): farewells, the realization that real life is not like the movies, and rain. Lots of rain. “The rain didn’t soak through my clothes,” she once again makes you picture it, the same way she does on Forever and Always (“And it rains in my bedroom, everything is wrong”), and on the obvious “Come In With The Rain.” If you dissect “Bye Bye Baby” a bit further and isolate some of the lines, you’ll notice that Swift is also permanently disconnecting from Scott Borchetta and Big Machine Records: “Bye bye to everything I thought was on my side.” Some things coincide but nothing is accidental in Swift’s lyricism. It’s hard to imagine how Swift will reconcile revisiting her personal, self-portraying songs after evolving into a taleteller position on folklore and evermore. The singer has veered into a more mature songwriting style in recent years, but wherever her earlier catalog lacks maturity, it abounds with witty metaphors and fun climaxes, and Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is testament to that.
Listen to Fearless (Taylor’s Version):
