Taylor Swift announces ‘Red’ for next re-recorded album

Taylor Swift has confirmed that her next re-recorded album will be ‘Red’.

The pop star shared the news today (June 18), revealing that the re-recording of her 2012 album will “be the first time you hear all 30 songs that were meant to go” on the original album. It’s released on November 19.

Part of Swift’s message explaining the context of the original and her plans for the new version reads: “Musically and lyrically, Red 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. 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.

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“Sometimes you need to talk it over (over and over and over) for it to ever really be….over. 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. This will be the first time you hear all 30 songs that were meant to go on Red. And hey, one of them is even 10 minutes long.”

Swift is remaking all her albums up to 2017’s ‘Reputation’ after the rights to the records were sold by her former record label without her permission.

In April the singer-songwriter shared the re-recorded version of her second album, 2008’s ‘Fearless’ – titled ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version’) – as well as a previously unheard collaboration with Maren Morris called ‘You All Over Me’.

Addressing the process of laying down ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift said that she “tried to create a ‘same but better’ version” of the album.

She told People in April: “In terms of production, I really wanted to stay very loyal to the initial melodies that I had thought of for these songs.

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“And so we really did go in and try to create a ‘the same but better’ version. We kept all the same parts that I initially dreamed up for these songs. But if there was any way that we could improve upon the sonic quality, we did.”

Taylor Swift performs live in 2019. CREDIT: Dc/Media Punch/Alamy Live News

The pop star once again teamed up with her collaborators Jack Antonoff and The National’s Aaron Dessner – who both worked on last year’s ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’ – for the project, while also bringing in the musicians involved in the original ‘Fearless’ as well as her touring band.

“But yeah, I did go in line by line and listen to every single vocal and think, you know, what are my inflections here,” Swift continued. “If I can improve upon it, I did. But I really did want this to be very true to what I initially thought of and what I had initially written. But better. Obviously.”

It’s not known what order Swift will continue to re-record and re-release her albums in.






Meanwhile, Swift was honoured last week with the National Music Publishers Association’s Songwriter Icon Award.

As reported by Variety, in her speech, Swift thanked her publisher Universal, fans and songwriters, saying the practice of writing songs remains “magical and mystical” to her.