We live in a dichotomous time. One in which ageism still runs rampant, but also when to acknowledge any potential limitations or alterations due to age would be, let’s say, unkosher. With the latest addition to Taylor Swift’s re-recording project, it continues to remain clear that she’s avoided re-recording her first album for so long (side-stepping the logical approach of getting that out of the way first) because it’s difficult to sing the way she once did with something like conviction. And for those who have been living under a rock, the way she once sang was with a country lilt. Something that turned out, in the end, to be an affectation she was ready to do away with after a certain point. Namely, after realizing that pop was so much more fun…and profitable. As country artists like Shania Twain found out before her, there was more than enough financial value to the transition than there was to something like “artistic integrity.”
Swift dancing around the re-recording of her first self-titled album is not without coincidence. Nor is it that she seems eager to get the recording of her earliest albums out of the way. After all, the older she gets, the harder it is to “pass” for that “naïve little girl” she once was. And sometimes still likes to play. Particularly if she wants her re-recordings to come across with as much “sincerity” as the originals. But, obviously, it’s hard to “get it up” for certain periods of her career. In this instance, her pre-Red days.
To put it in perspective, if Britney Spears is the benchmark (and of course she is) for measuring a teen singer’s transition into her “womanhood” era, then Speak Now is Taylor’s Britney, the very album on which Spears announced, “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” Swift, too, was caught somewhere in between that “transition” in October of 2010, when Speak Now was released, just two-ish months before her twenty-first birthday. Britney, similarly, was also released in the October before Spears’ twentieth birthday in December (a Sag, like Swift). That said, Swift was still capable, while caught in the “girlhood era,” of saying and actually meaning the cringe-y lyrics on “Mine,” the first song and single to kick off Speak Now. On it, she chirps (as best as she still knows how with a “country accent”), “Do you remember, we were sittin’ there, by the water?/You put your arm around me, for the first time/You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter/You are the best thing, that’s ever been mine.” Possessive much? Of course. Because Swift is nothing if not one of many great reinforcers of the capitalist juggernaut, which includes monogamous coupledom at the top of the list.
That much continues on “Sparks Fly,” a song written about Jake Owen (and, by the way, confirmed: he has green eyes). Who would have been about twenty-five to Swift’s seventeen when she opened for him at a gig in Portland, Oregon. Like Mariah Carey turning a kernel of her dalliance with Derek Jeter into “My All,” Swift does the same with her schoolgirl crush on Owen. So it is that she croons, “Get me with those green eyes, baby, as the lights go down/Give me something that’ll haunt me when you’re not around/‘Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile.” Whether or not those sentiments were one-sided matters as little now as it did then. The point is, Swift was recognizing her sexual awakening a.k.a. becoming a boy-crazy horndog. Of course, this is not something one “should say”—just as, evidently, Swift thought she should no longer say the line, “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress,” instead opting for the less slut-shaming, “He was a moth to the flame/She was holding the matches.” It doesn’t have quite the same “sick burn” feel, but Swift is nothing if not an obliging whitewasher (see also: her removal of the word “FAT” from her “Anti-Hero” video).
The second single to be released from Speak Now, “Back to December,” also loses some of its luster with the knowledge that Swift is quite amicable with the ex who inspired it, Taylor Lautner. A claim that few, if any, of Swift’s exes can make (apart from Harry Styles). So amicable are they, in fact, that Lautner obligingly agreed to appear in the video for one of Swift’s “From the Vault” tracks, “I Can See You.” Swift’s expression of regret over breaking Lautner’s heart by ending things with him (for once, she was the abandoner, not the abandonee) rings hollower now, knowing her penchant for making mountains out of molehills (again, à la Mariah with “My All”). As she seems to with the lines, “So, this is me swallowing my pride/Standin’ in front of you sayin’, ‘I’m sorry for that night’/And I go back to December all the time/It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missin’ you/Wishin’ I’d realized what I had when you were mine/I go back to December, turn around and make it alright/I go back to December all the time.”
But apparently, all that wishing and regret wasn’t really necessary, for she turned it around by letting Lautner not only be in her new music video, but also sparing him the “Taylor curse” of being branded as a “bad man.” As is the case with John Mayer, whose cruelty toward Swift not only manifested recently on Midnights with “Could’ve Should’ve Would’ve” (featuring the immortally gut-punching line, “Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first”). However, he’s not the subject just yet, with “Speak Now” preceding “Dear John.” And it is the former that serves as the anchor for the overarching theme of the record—which is to speak up and say what you feel when you feel it, instead of repressing it into a lifetime of yearning and festering regret. In other words, what so many of Swift’s songs are based around.
The legend goes that “Speak Now” was “sparked” by Hayley Williams, who has been friends with Swift in some capacity since roughly 2008, when the two started hanging out in Nashville together. Thus, the inspiration allegedly came from Williams having to attend the wedding of her ex- boyfriend (/ex-bandmate) of three years, Josh Farro, in April of 2010. That would have meant Swift came up with the track and overall concept for Speak Now pretty quickly (even if Williams probably got her wedding invite in 2009). Not to say she couldn’t have, it’s just that, knowing her penchant for advanced planning, it seems a bit far-fetched. Nonetheless, lyrics like, “Don’t say yes, run away now/I’ll meet you when you’re out of the church at the back door/Don’t wait, or say a single vow/You need to hear me out/And they said, ‘Speak now’” feel fairly applicable to the situation Williams found herself in. Should she have been the kind of girl to play the Benjamin Braddock role at a wedding.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a continued “You Belong With Me” motif markedly present on this track as Swift sings verses that include, “She floats down the aisle like a pageant queen/But I know you wish it was me/You wish it was me, don’t you?” and “I am not the kind of girl/Who should be rudely bargin’ in on a white veil occasion/But you are not the kind of boy/Who should be marrying the wrong girl, hehheh.” That hehheh replacing a girlier, more tittering sort of laugh on the original version. Just another subtle sign of the ways in which it’s impossible to truly recreate something, least of all a phase of one’s life. And yet, that’s not really what the point has become with these re-recordings. Rather, it’s about Swift “reclaiming her narrative” and enjoying how she can control it with better, more effortless adroitness in her thirties. Which brings us to “Dear John,” the “All Too Well” of “Speak Now.” Hearing it remade in 2023, what stands out most is how much it sounds like something from the Olivia Rodrigo playbook—in other words, it highlights how big of an influence Swift has been on Rodrigo. Case in point, Swift berating Mayer, “You paint me a blue sky/Then go back and turn it to rain/And I lived in your chess game/But you changed the rules every day/Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone tonight.” This fundamental sentiment being repurposed by Rodrigo on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” (which itself samples music from the stripped down version of Swift’s “New Year’s Day”) as, “You got me fucked up in the head, boy/Never doubted myself so much/Like, am I pretty?/Am I fun, boy?/I hate that I give you power over that kind of stuff/‘Cause it’s always one step forward and three steps back/I’m the love of your life until I make you mad/It’s always one step forward and three steps back/Do you love me, want me, hate me?/Boy, I don’t understand/No, I don’t understand.”
“Dear John” themes even persist on Rodrigo’s latest, “vampire,” with the latter singing, “And every girl/I ever talked to told me you were bad, bad news/You called them crazy/God, I hate the way I called them crazy too/You’re so convincing/How do you lie without flinching?/(How do you lie? How do you lie? How do you lie?)/Ooh, what a mesmerizing, paralyzing, fucked-up little thrill/Can’t figure out just how you do it, and God knows I never will/Went for me and not her/‘Cause girls your age know better.” The obvious precursor to this was Swift on “Dear John” accusing with equal anger-sadness, “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?/The girl in the dress cried the whole way home/I should’ve known.” Swift then adds,“And you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors/Who don’t understand/And I look back in regret how I ignored when they said, ‘Run as fast as you can.’” While the lyrics are heartrending enough, it lacks the same potency as “All Too Well,” which is surprising considering that said song was written on her sophomore record, which means “Dear John,” as a third album effort, should have more panache in comparison. But no, turns out, Jake Gyllenhaal is the better muse.
And, talking of assholes, what follows is the third single from Speak Now, “Mean.” Better known as: the song Swift famously wrote about critic Bob Lefsetz, who ripped her a new one over her Grammys performance with Stevie Nicks. The two joined together onstage for a performance of “Rihannon” on February 1, 2010 (proving Swift can turn out a response song quickly, so there goes the theory about it not being possible that “Speak Now” could be in reference to Hayley Williams). While Nicks was acting ever the consummate performer, Swift appeared to be convinced they were at a karaoke bar. The result was Lefsetz’s damning criticism that included, among other false prophecies, “Taylor Swift can’t sing,” “…did Taylor Swift kill her career overnight? I’ll argue she did” and “Will Taylor Swift be duetting with the stars of the 2030s? Doubtful.” Though that latter prophecy could be accurate for a different reason, as many potential audience members might have already been sacrificed to climate change (or will be too broke by then to care about seeing what adolescent(e) du jour is duetting with Swift).
Swift’s decision to lash out right away after Lefsetz unleashed his “hot take” (for, as Swift would say, “Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging”) is telling of her age at the time, as she chose to ignore the old adage, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Rather than showing and not telling Lefsetz what her career was about to do (/already doing), she let herself get tripped up on his words. For Swift, perfectionist that she is, doesn’t handle criticism well. Nor does anyone in the climate of today, least of all fans of the musicians being critiqued. In fact, Swift was ahead of her time in terms of foretelling that everyone would side with artists and not critics in the present day. With “stans” lining up to fight battles for their “queens” online and belittle any writer (reduced to the title of “blogger,” in certain instances) who they perceived to be slighting their “mother.” Overlooking the notion that criticism is an art in itself.
“Mean” is the apex of Swift exhibiting herself as a “little girl” who can’t take the heat. And that much is evident in her erstwhile girlish voice continuing to accuse, “All you’re ever gonna be is mean.” Though she was sure to prove her prediction in declaring, “Someday, I’ll be livin’ in a big ole city.” One that she would choose to help trash as a result of being “big enough so you can’t hit me.” At least not with anything more than a paltry three thousand dollars’ worth of fines. To be sure, it seems timely that Swift should release another album on the heels of her trash controversy, much like she did with Midnights to mitigate her private jet usage backlash. Sure, it’s probably happenstance…but it’s also very convenient by way of helping people forget all about her environmetally-damaging foibles with the pretty distraction of her pop hits.
Which brings us to the fourth single, “The Story Of Us.” A very early 00s-sounding ditty that finds Swift at her most Avril Lavigne-esque, with certain guitar riffs harkening back to “Sk8r Boi” as Swift proceeds to bemoan how “the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now.” Another song presumed to be about John Mayer, Swift firmly establishes her songwriting preference for dissecting breakups with this track. One that segues into the slowed-down tempo of “Never Grow Up,” which starts out wanting to sound like Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” (perhaps another way for Swift to make up for butchering “Rihannon” in Stevie Nicks’ presence). But rather than being about having grown old already, Swift speaks (now) from the vantage point of still being in that “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” place. Hoping somehow that she can hold on to the girlhood side of things forever. And, for a long time, she did. This being part of why she noted in Miss Americana, “There’s this thing people say about celebrities, that they’re frozen at the age they got famous. I had a lot of growing up to do, just to try and catch up to twenty-nine.” Currently at thirty-three, it seems Swift still has her bouts with wanting to heed her own warning, “Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up/Don’t you ever grow up, just stay this little/Oh, darlin’, don’t you ever grow up/Don’t you ever grow up, it could stay this simple.” Put more succinctly: don’t grow up, it’s a trap.
Maybe that’s why she had a “rebellious teen” moment after her breakup with Joe Alwyn that led her to think it was a good idea to “canoodle” with Matty Healy. But it didn’t take long for her to become (dis)“Enchanted.” The only track Swift seems to want to make a permanent Speak Now mainstay on her Eras Tour setlist (complete with a bombastic, Cinderella-esque ball gown as her costume choice). Likely because, although “Enchanted” is not an “official” single, it serves as one of those other fan favorites that’s getting more love and acknowledgement from Swift in the present (though not to the same extent as “All Too Well”).
As Swift belts out the chorus, “This night is sparklin’, don’t you let it go/I’m wonderstruck, blushin’ all the way home/I’ll spend forever wonderin’ if you knew/I was enchanted to meet you,” the fairytale motif is ruined only by the thought of the fact that it’s about Owl City’s Adam Young. Thus, it’s very much in the spirit of “Sparks Fly” in terms of how Swift decided to write a sweeping, dramatic love song based on a fleeting crush/fluttering of the loins. Her romantic flow is quickly interrupted by “Better Than Revenge,” the aforementioned song that Swift felt obliged to rework for the purposes of “relitigation,” as Laura Snapes called it in her assessment of the album. Once again channeling Avril Lavigne (no wonder Olivia Rodrigo wanted to collaborate with her onstage for a rendition of “Complicated” during her Sour Tour), Swift chastises the girl who “took” her man (or boy) in a manner befitting 00s rhetoric (hear also: Marina and the Diamonds’ “Girls”) regarding how women should vilify other women for their boyfriends’ inherent shittiness. Swift does just that by accusing, “She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think/She’s an actress, woah/She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress [again, these are the original lyrics], woah/Soon, she’s gonna find stealing other people’s toys/On the playground won’t make you many friends.” This before warning, “She should keep in mind, she should keep in mind/There is nothing I do better than revenge, ha.” Over the years, Swift has made that abundantly clear, learning to better bide her time and let “karma” do its job (even if it’s extremely narcissistic thinking to believe the universe gives a shit about any of us). And, in many regards, this particular track feels like a precursor to Reputation’s “Look What You Made Me Do”—though that wouldn’t be the first song inspired by Swift’s arch nemesis Kanye West. Indeed, that was still his legal name when she wrote “Innocent.”
Another slow jam that frames things within the context of being a happy, naïve child versus a mean, jaded adult, Swift’s aim was to show forgiveness to West after he infamously bum-rushed the stage during the 2009 VMAs while Swift was in the midst of accepting the award for Best Female Video. Despite his rudeness and dismissiveness of her accomplishment, Swift found a way to assure him, “Time turns flames to embers/You’ll have new Septembers [the month the VMAs took place]/Every one of us has messed up, too, ooh/Minds change like the weather/I hope you remember/Today is never too late to be brand new, oh.” As everyone knows by now, it’s definitely too late for Ye to be brand new. Nonetheless, at the time, Swift thought he might improve, telling him, “It’s alright, just wait and see/Your string of lights is still bright to me, oh/Who you are is not where you’ve been/You’re still an innocent.” But turns out this “story of us” was also another tragedy.
On the plus side, Beyoncé tried to correct the error as it happened, inviting Swift up onstage to finish her speech later in the ceremony when she accepted the award for Video of the Year. Incidentally, before Beyoncé got hold of the title in 2013, Swift had her own “Haunted.” A song that commences with the dramatic string arrangements (though nothing compared to the ones in “Papa Don’t Preach”) required of addressing yet another disintegrating relationship as Swift bemoans, “I thought I had you figured out/Can’t breathe whenever you’re gone/Can’t turn back now, I’m haunted.” Haunted, specifically, by knowing that the end of her romance is nigh as she struggles to figure out where it all went wrong. Thus, her explanation when it was first released, “‘Haunted’ is about the moment that you realize the person you’re in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don’t know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it’s fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you’re realizing that he’s kind of falling out of love. That’s a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you’re trying to tell yourself it’s not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night writing this song about it.” Probably sometime around midnight, to be exact.
Thematically speaking, “Haunted” transitions seamlessly into “Last Kiss,” a more stripped down ballad about Joe Jonas (as “Haunted” easily could have been). The twenty-seven-second intro, in typical Tay fashion, undeniably refers to the twenty-seven-second call Jonas made to break up with Swift. Accordingly, it prompts Swift to woefully ruminate on the ruins of her so-called great love, “I never thought we’d have a last kiss/I never imagined we’d end like this/Your name, forever the name on my lips, ooh/So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep/And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe.” Just as Swift would do with many others after Jonas broke her heart (a.k.a. wounded her ego and pride).
Things shift to a slightly more upbeat timbre on “Long Live.” As it should, for it’s a love letter to Swift’s “team” (i.e., the army that wakes up every day to help make Taylor Swift Taylor Swift) and her fans. When discussing it back in 2010, Swift said, “This song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we’ve had in the last two years.” Add thirteen more years to that now and you’ve got a breadth of work and accomplishments that very much adds up to “Long Live.” During which Swift chirps (albeit with less girlishness on this version), “Long, long live the walls we crashed through/How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you/And I was screaming, ‘Long live all the magic we made’/And bring on all the pretenders, I’m not afraid/Singing, ‘Long live all the mountains we moved’/I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you.” One of the latest dragons being Ticketmaster, as it were. With Swift managing to make a literal federal case out of Ticketmaster’s monopoly on live music after she predictably crashed the website when tickets for the Eras Tour went on sale.
Although “Long Live” was the finale on the standard edition of the record, the final single from Speak Now, “Ours,” was originally on the deluxe edition of the album. Ironically, it’s the sort of song that has been a little too on the nose for Swift the past few months, with everyone casting judgmental eyes on her dalliance with Matty Healy. Therefore, when she sings, “Don’t you worry your pretty little mind/People throw rocks at things that shine/And life makes love look hard/The stakes are high, the water’s rough/But this love is ours,” it comes off with a touch more hilarity at this particular juncture in her life.
After “Ours,” Swift offers up another song from the original deluxe edition: “Superman.” A track that reveals just how much in “fairytale mode” she really was during this era. For Superman is nothing if not a modern update to the white knight trope. So it is that Swift talks of being rescued when she sings in that country twang that feels ever less sincere, “I watch Superman fly away/You’ve got a busy day today/Go save the world, I’ll be around/And I watch Superman fly away/Come back, I’ll be with you someday/I’ll be right here on the ground/When you come back down/And I watch you fly around the world/And I hope you don’t save some other girl.” Her jejune viewpoint persists on the first number to kick off the “From the Vault” section, “Electric Touch” featuring Fall Out Boy. A band she cites as being majorly influential on her own songwriting. Unashamed to do so when she told Rolling Stone back in 2019, “I love Fall Out Boy so much. Their songwriting really influenced me, lyrically, maybe more than anyone else. They take a phrase and they twist it. ‘Loaded God complex/Cock it and pull it’? When I heard that, I was like, ‘I’m dreaming.’” As many listeners of “Electric Touch” (not to be confused with MGMT’s “Electric Feel”) might think they are when they hear the lyrics, “Got a history of stories ending sadly/Still hoping that the fire won’t burn me/Just one time, just one time,” with the two harmonizing on a chorus that goes, “All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life/Got a feelin’ your electric touch could fill this ghost town up with life.” Whether that’s the “ghost town” of Swift’s heart or crotch is at one’s discretion. And yes, in many respects, it mimics the theme of “Mine,” with Swift also talking about being burned and afraid to open her heart or trust anyone.
Tweaking that theme on “When Emma Falls in Love,” Swift positions the (anti-)heroine of the song as a heartbreaker on par with Amy from Britney Spears’ “If U Seek Amy.” And, just as it was on that song, Swift is really talking about herself when she talks about Emma (a.k.a. Emma Stone). Even if she sings, “If they only had a chance to love her/And to tell you the truth, sometimes I wish I was her.” Newsflash: Swift is. Particularly with depictions such as, “When Emma falls in love, she paces the floor/Closes the blinds and locks the door/When Emma falls in love, she calls up her mom/Jokes about the ways that this one could go wrong/She waits and takes her time/‘Cause Little Miss Sunshine always thinks it’s gonna rain/When Emma falls in love, I know/That boy will never be the same.” The reigning topic of a big-time girl in a small-time town also endures when Swift compares “Emma” to being “like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town.” Well, then one supposes she’d do like what Swift (or Madonna or Britney Spears or Lana Del Rey or, well, Emma Stone) did and become a star.
Swift switches tone in her most marked way yet on the album by opting to release “I Can See You” as the lead “vault single.” And it’s obvious here that Swift reworked it heavily to fit in with her current pop sound, with a guitar riff that occasionally sounds as though it’s interpolating The Clash’s “London Calling.” It also stands apart for being a song about sexually charged desire (with Swift expressing such fantasies as, “And I could see you up against the wall with me”)—so no wonder she wasn’t ready to release it back then, lest she risk being slut-shamed. You know, the same way she slut-shamed a nameless girl on “Better Than Revenge.”
If she had taken the plunge on releasing it back then, it could have (much sooner) instigated her “Castles Crumbling.” This being the title of her song featuring Hayley Williams (which, to be sure, feels like an “Easter egg” that confirms Williams being the influence behind “Speak Now”). An eerily prescient track (reiterating the belief that surely Swift must rework her vault songs) that finds Swift presaging the downfall of her “empire,” her dominance and prestige. This (sort of) occurring after her fall from grace in 2016 as a result of Kim Kardashian releasing select snippets of a conversation between Swift and Kanye West that indicated she gave him her blessing to release the final version of “Famous,” a single that found him bragging of Taylor, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why?/I made that bitch famous.” Things went very downhill for Swift in the aftermath. At least in terms of her formerly “innocent” reputation giving way more fully to accusations of Swift being “calculated” and “a snake.” But, at the bare minimum, she got the chance to take back the narrative on 2017’s Reputation, along with taking back the snake emojis lobbed at her in her comments sections, parading the reptile as her primary “talisman” during this era.
Regardless, there’s no denying she still felt like the “Foolish One” for quite some time. And it is this particular vault ditty that seems to get preferential treatment in that Swift enlisted her current go-to producer (apart from Jack Antonoff), Aaron Dessner, to help dust it off and polish it off with minimalist instrumentation that allows Swift’s self-deprecating tone to shine through as she curses, “You give me just enough attention to keep my hopes too high/Wishful thoughts forget to mention when something’s really not right/And I will block out these voices of reason in my head/And the voices say, ‘You are not the exception, you will never learn your lesson’/Foolish one/Stop checkin’ your mailbox for confessions of love/That ain’t never gonna come/You will take the long way, you will take the long way down.”
Learning the hard way is, let’s just say it: “Timeless.” Just as Swift’s songwriting shtick of detailing the finer points of yearning and burning in a way not seen since the mid-twentieth century. That said, Swift references a “30s bride” and “a crowded street in 1944” on this song. Though she seems to be talking about a rando elderly couple after walking into an antique shop and unearthing a cardboard box with “photos: twenty-five cents each,” some fans have speculated the song is an homage to her grandparents, Marjorie and Dean. But, more than likely, it’s just Swift being her usual wistful, romantic self as she echoes sentiments from folklore’s “invisible string” while pronouncing, “‘Cause I believe that we were supposed to find this/So, even in a different life, you still would’ve been mine/We would’ve been timeless.” As would Swift’s grand romance with her fandom (maybe that’s why she secretly likens herself to Cleopatra, knowing full well she would have legions of devoted followers in any epoch).
And yet, there are those listeners who aren’t as easily beguiled and “enchanted” by Swift in general or her re-recordings specifically. Laura Snapes, the aforementioned critic who described these albums as a form of “relitigation,” bringing the content “up to snuff” with post-woke culture, accurately remarked, “Still only halfway through, the project is starting to feel a little wearying and pointless, other than in the business sense.” Especially since, with a record like Speak Now remade in the present, it’s all but impossible to believe in Swift’s earnestness. Presently mired in the stench of wealth, prosperity and knowing full well she has the world (and many men in it) wrapped around her finger.
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