In 2022, Madonna stated the obvious with regard to the mention of potentially selling her music catalogue: “Ownership is everything.” In other words, there’s no price tag she would accept to give up control of her music. Taylor Swift understands that better than anyone as she continues the daunting task of re-recording all the albums she made while under contract with Big Machine Records. At fifteen years old, the caveat of letting the label own her masters as part of the signing deal probably seemed like a small price to pay for fame. Over a decade later, as one of the most famous pop stars in the world, it suddenly felt like a huge mistake. Especially when music manager Scooter Braun bought Big Machine Records in 2019, thereby claiming ownership over Swift’s prized masters.
The only “negotiation” Swift was offered in terms of buying them back was to agree to re-sign with Big Machine and “earn” one album back per every album recorded under the new contract. That’s fucked-up, Shylock-type shit, obviously, and Swift vehemently turned down the so-called deal in favor of signing with Republic Records, who offered a contract that allowed her to own all of her master recordings going forward. Without Swift on “his side,” Braun then sold the masters to a private equity firm called Shamrock Holdings (which, yes, sounds totally made up, complete with the word “sham” in it). And now, here we are two re-recordings (Fearless and Red) of six later, with Swift still managing to get her digs in at the (Big) Machine by releasing re-recorded versions of even her standalone singles from The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond. Luckily, this wasn’t the only “celebratory” marker of launching her Eras Tour on March 17th (because one supposes she loves an Irish boy too). She also offered a re-recording of “If This Was A Movie,” a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Speak Now (the likely next re-recording, as all but confirmed by the requisite Easter eggs Swift likes to dole out to salivating fans). But, better still, is a truly unreleased song from Lover called “All of the Girls You Loved Before.”
Released too late to use in the soundtrack for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, “All of the Girls You Loved Before” could easily have been written from the perspective of Lara Jean (Lana Condor) after finally getting the boy she was obsessing over for so long to see that it was her he should be with (this smacking of another Taylor single, “You Belong With Me”). Rather than playing into the 00s school of thought on how “other women” should be treated (read: with disdain—e.g., Pink’s “Stupid Girls” or Marina and the Diamonds’ “Girls”) by their “competitor,” Swift wields the “correct” approach (a.k.a. the publicly sanctioned one we’re all supposed to adhere to now—Hailey Bieber take heed) with regard to seeing these previous women as “gifts.” Silver linings and all that rot. Because, while he was out being a himbo, it gave him the chance to understand what he did and did not want in a woman. Or, as Taylor puts it, “All of the girls you loved before/Made you the one I’ve fallen for/Every dead-end street [a euphemism for “dead-end vagina”] led you straight to me.” It has a certain “invisible string” slant to it, to be sure. Swift also speaks of her own patchy past with men as she adds, “When I think of all the makeup/Fake love out on the town/Cryin’ in the bathroom [a line Olivia Rodrigo also riffs on in “good 4 u”] for some dude/Whose name I cannot remember now.” In effect, everyone else was just a pile of trash that allowed Swift and Joe Alwyn to climb to the top of the heap together.
Another notable quality about “All of the Girls You Loved Before” is that it’s directly in contrast to the message of “Hits Different” (not to be confused with SZA’s “Hit Different”), a bonus track from the Target edition of Midnights. For, apparently, three years after Lover, Swift was in a less welcoming headspace toward her “love object’s” additional dalliances by noting, “I pictured you with other girls in love/Then threw up on the street.” But hey, people are so many colliding emotions at once that Swift can hardly be blamed for inconsistency in sentiments on the matter of dealing with “other hoes.”
As for her Hunger Games re-recordings, “Eyes Open” wasn’t the best track to resuscitate if Swift was hoping for a reminder of her musical prowess. Mainly because the track has a decidedly Avril Lavigne tinge, correlatingly saturated in the 00s sound of Rock (said in the “italicized, capital R” sort of way back then despite it being the lamest sound ever), even though it was originally released in 2012. Another re-recording from the same soundtrack, “Safe & Sound,” stands the test of time slightly better. Perhaps because it was given the prompt to embody “what Appalachian music would sound like in three hundred years.” Swift, a sucker for being part of any movie soundtrack related to Appalachia (hear also: “Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing), thusly responded with sparse instrumentation as she harmonizes with Joy Williams and John Paul White (a.k.a. The Civil Wars), “Just close your eyes/You’ll be all right/Come morning light/You and I will be safe and sound.” A likely story.
The fourth song of the “Eras Tour celebration pack,” “If This Was A Movie (Taylor’s Version),” is awash in the country twang Swift was still fond of employing back in 2010. Considered a “fast-paced ballad,” Swift urges, “Come back, come back, come back to me/Like you would, you would if this was a movie/Stand in the rain outside ’til I came out.” That last line, of course romanticizing the stalker-y behavior of Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) in Say Anything (minus the rain…though there is a separate scene of him being drenched as he pines over Diane Court [Ione Skye] while talking on a pay phone). She pleads again (desperate much?), “Come back, come back, come back to me/Like you could, you could if you just said you’re sorry/I know that we could work it out.” To the point of Swift insisting it would all be okay if the boy in question just apologized, she was sure to state during opening night at Glendale, Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, “Sort of a running, recurring theme in my music is I love to explain to men how to apologize. I just love it, it’s kind of my thing. I love to tell them step-by-step: here’s how simple this is to fix things if you just follow these simple steps I’m laying out for you in a three-minute song. I just love the idea of men apologizing.” A fantasy that certainly gets plenty of play in “If This Was A Movie” (incidentally, Steven Spielberg’s new theme song).
Although the track appeared as a bonus on Speak Now, it is being promoted as part of The More Fearless (Taylor’s Version) Chapter. Fans have speculated that because “If This Was A Movie” stands alone as the only track on Speak Now not to have been written entirely by Swift, she wants to section it apart from the re-recording of an album that will resultantly be solely written by her. But that seems like a very megalomaniacal reason. Then again, you don’t become the first female to sell out a show at every stadium from State Farm to SoFi without perhaps having a touch of the megalomaniac’s control freak nature.
Genna Rivieccio
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