Alaina Merchant, Panther Paw Editor
Oct. 27 2014, Taylor Swift released her fifth album, 1989. Fast forward to 2023, and she announces that 1989 Taylor’s Version is being released with six new songs from the vault tracks on its ninth anniversary. 1989 was a major transition for Taylor’s career; this was the first of her albums to be pop, while all of her previous albums had been country.
Over a month before the release date, Taylor, being the mastermind she is, had made fans unlock vault tracks by a google search with 33 million word puzzles, tied back to her 1989 era. It only took a day for the swifties to crack the vault open and get the titles to the new vault tracks.
She has two re-released versions of the album, the normal 1989 (Taylor’s Version) with all of the vault tracks and then the deluxe version with the re-record of “Bad Blood” featuring Kendrick Lamar.
With her releasing six new tracks and originally having 17 tracks, she now has a total of 23 songs on the album. The six ‘from the vault’ tracks being called, “Say Don’t Go,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Suburban Legends,” “Is It Over Now,” “Sweeter Than Fiction,” and one other.
She did however release two songs from the album early, the first being the ninth track on the album, “Wildest Dreams.” The reason she released it was because there was a TikTok trend and it was using the stolen version so she made the decision to re-record it. The second early release was the 11 track on the album, “This Love.” It was pre-recorded for the Amazon original “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
The vault songs perfectly match the album. They all describe the situation she was in perfectly. The first vault track was a play of Swift’s discussions at that time around her dating life. It’s on the slower sides of songs. “Suburban Legends” sparkles with the bounciness of the chords. “Now That We Don’t Talk” shows the aftermath of a heartbreak, however it’s a different kind of heartbreak about how her ex is living without her in his life. “Say Don’t Go” is a kind of song that would be screamed if played in stadiums. It’s a very expressive song showing how she wants to be both seen and loved at the same time. “Is It Over Now” is a song that could be left on repeat; she talks about feelings of unfinished business of the complicated past. The last and final vault track was ‘“Sweeter Than Fiction” which is only on the orange vinyl sold at Target.
On the day of the re-release she had posted some photos for this era and at the end of the pictures there is a handwritten note quoting many song titles. The note talks about how proud she is that she was able to have this opportunity.
When looking at her re-recorded albums you may notice that there’s always a (Taylor’s Version) at the end of each title. The reason for this is because in 2018 she had left her recorded label Big Machine Records. Then in 2019 that same record label had sold the first six albums Taylor had released to a music ‘mega manager’ Scooter Braun. Braun was then in control of most of her work, which meant that she was not allowed to perform any of the music he owned. The only way she would be able to do so is if she re-recorded it, and so she did.
Taylor now owns four out of the six albums that have been stolen and re-recorded. Her Debut album and her sixth album Reputation are the last two left. There is much speculation that Swift is going to release Reputation sometime soon. Will Swift pull out the easter eggs again?
