Taylor Swift released “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” (“TV”) April 9, a re-recording of her 2008 album “Fearless.” The release is the first in a series of planned re-recordings of Swift’s first six albums. This follows a highly publicized battle over the ownerships of the albums, which were acquired by talent manager Scooter Braun as part of an acquisition with Big Machine Records, Swift’s former label. Arguing that she was not given the opportunity to purchase her masters herself, Swift made the unprecedented decision to re-record and release her old albums in an attempt to devalue the original recordings.
To many of Swift’s diehard fans, the decision to listen to “TV” over “Fearless” is self-evident. On Twitter, fans have written threads on how to support Swift’s goals, such as eliminating the 2008 album from their Spotify rotation.
Swift’s dispute with Braun has moved beyond one artist’s feud and taken on far-reaching implications for the rights of artists to their own work. But for most casual listeners, the choice between Fearless’s original and re-recorded versions will not come out of loyalty to Swift or an ideological stance on the issue. It will come out of convenience or preference. Thus, “TV” is not a symbol but a product. If Swift hopes to render the original album obsolete, then the new version must offer a preferable alternative.
In many ways, “TV” succeeds at this. Swift records her original album with stunning accuracy. With the exception of the occasional altered word, no one is likely caught off-guard when attempting to sing along with the cadence and inflection memorized from the original record. All of the noticeable differences between the two albums are improvements: the 2021 production is cleaner, and Swift’s vocal ability has undeniably developed over the past 13 years.
Even so, I argue that “Fearless”’s re-recording does not fully succeed at showing up the original album. Moreover, I argue that this would be an impossible task for Swift in this stage of her career.
“Fearless” was Swift’s second album. When it was released, Swift, with her voluminous curls and fake country accent, fully embodied her early persona as America’s Teenage Sweetheart. The album exudes heightened teenage emotion, approaching first love with wide-eyed enthusiasm and first heartbreak with alternating grief and outrage.
In spite of the technical accuracy with which Swift re-records the album’s songs, present day’s Swift feels removed from them in a way that the Swift of the original never does. Take “Forever & Always,” a relentlessly angry song directed at a boy who broke the titular promise. In Swift’s new recording, she sings it as loudly as she did at 18, but she does so with ease, comfortably hitting notes that she once had to work for. On “Fearless”, in contrast, Swift’s voice wavers and cracks. She audibly strains towards the loudest moments of the song. But rather than making her sound weak, the moments make Swift sound viscerally angry as she audibly pushes herself to express the extent of her hurt. 2008 Swift’s obvious effort renders the song authentic in a way that the 2021 version is not.
This comparison holds true for most of the album. In a world of polished teen idols, Swift’s original recording of “Fearless,” thanks in large part to Swift’s teenage delivery, stands out by being an authentic expression of teenage emotion. “TV,” while easier to listen to, doesn’t manage to preserve this feeling.
The one song that truly benefits from the transition between albums is “Fifteen,” Swift’s rueful ode to high school freshman romance. When Swift sings, “In your life, you’ll do things greater than / Dating the boy on the football team,” her voice opens up a dialogue between the two albums, her older and younger selves. In most songs on “TV” Swift struggles to reinsert herself into the role of her teenage self. On “Fifteen,” she finally assumes the perspective from which the song was written: older, wiser, offering a bird’s-eye-view to the emotions that consume the rest of the album.
Unless you’re Swift or Braun yourself, you likely don’t need to disavow either album. I recommend blasting the objectively higher-quality 2021 recording at Smith basement parties and the 2008 recording while lying on your dorm room floor drowning in nostalgia. Swift has in some ways succeeded at reclaiming ownership of “Fearless,” but she’ll never be able to lose the original album completely, in the same way that no one can ever outrun their teenage self. Luckily, in those moments in which you find yourself subsumed once more by adolescence, haunted by memories or simply indulging in similarly dramatic emotions, “Fearless” will still be there.
[Image: Taylor Swift at last month’s Grammy Awards (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)]
