It’s Taylor Swift’s summer. We’re all just living in it.
During a concert for her Eras Tour in California on Wednesday night, Swift announced the release date of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of her 2014 album, “1989.” It will come out on Oct. 27, the same date that the original album was released nine years ago.
It should come as no surprise that fans, both in the stadium and on the internet, freaked out.
“Surprise!!” Swift wrote on social media. “The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27th.” She added that this was her “most FAVORITE rerecord I’ve ever done.”
The album includes hits like “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space.”
Swift has been rerecording her first six albums to regain control of them after the master recordings were sold. In 2019, the music executive Scooter Braun purchased Big Machine, Swift’s old label — and with it, the original recordings for Swift’s first six albums. The sale, Swift said at the time, had “stripped me of my life’s work.”
Since then, the back catalog has changed hands again. Braun’s company sold the rights to Swift’s music to Shamrock Capital, an investment firm founded by Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney, for more than $300 million.
In 2019, Swift announced her plan to rerecord the albums, and she has since released “Fearless,” “Red” and “Speak Now.”
Announcing the new version of “Fearless” in 2021, Swift wrote on Twitter that, “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”
That album, called “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” came with six additional songs that were not featured on the original “Fearless,” Swift’s 2009 mainstream breakthrough that won four Grammy Awards.
Now, Swift is in the middle of her Eras Tour, which has become an international business and cultural juggernaut this summer, with fans clamoring for tickets and demand putting ticketing systems under stress.
The show Wednesday night was the sixth at SoFi stadium outside Los Angeles, and the final one in the first United States leg of the tour. (More shows are planned in the United States in fall 2024.) Swift’s next shows will be in Mexico this month, with later dates in Argentina, Brazil, Japan and Europe. In total, 146 stadium dates have been booked for the Eras Tour.
Although Swift’s box office numbers aren’t publicly released, the trade publication Pollstar has estimated that Eras Tour earnings will surpass $1 billion when she gets to Singapore in March.
Swift fans — or “Swifties” — are known to see signs in everything Swift does or posts online, and they had speculated that she might announce her rerecording of “1989” on Wednesday night. SoFi Stadium had also teased a “surprise” on social media.
Claire Moses
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