At midnight Thursday, Nov. 12, Spotify crashed due to the drop of Red (Taylor’s Version). After announcing the release date five months ago, this was long-awaited by Taylor Swift fans, aka “Swifties,” across the world. The impact of this album is quite huge, so I am going to discuss some of the extent of it in the following text.
To explain why Swift is re-releasing her old albums in short: she was not given the opportunity to buy her catalog of music even though she made it clear she wanted to, and it was instead sold to someone else, so she does not own the masters to her earlier albums.
With re-releasing albums “Fearless” and “Red,” she now has ownership of the masters to five of her nine albums and has said she will continue to re-record and re-release the albums she does not own. Get the full rundown of why Swift is re-releasing her albums here.
Taylor Swift holds so much power that “Red (Taylor’s Version),” an album that was previously released, was still able to break Spotify’s single-day streaming records. On its release day, songs from “Red (TV)” filled the top five spots for Spotify’s US chart, and the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” arguably one of her best songs on the album, charted at number one on Spotify’s Global Chart. She is competing with herself at this point as “Red (TV)” also broke the record for an album by a female with most streams in one day in the history of Spotify, previously held by her album “Folklore,” which was released in 2020.
The album is made up of 30 tracks, nine of which were not on the original album, and is two hours and 10 minutes long. “Red” was sort of her transition from country to pop, so there is a wide spectrum of songs on it; in Taylor’s words, “There are like 14 different genres on this album.”
Her previous management dictated what direction they wanted her to go with this album, keeping it more country similar to what she had been successful with in the past. With the re-recording of “Red,” Taylor was able to release songs she wrote that did not fit with her management’s view that she wanted on the original album.
She included nine extra songs she wrote when re-making the Red album, calling them “from the vault” tracks. By doing this, she basically released a whole new album of songs about her experiences from that previous time period. My initial favorite songs were “Better Man,” “Nothing New (feat. Phoebe Bridgers),” and “All Too Well (10-minute version).”
There is definitely an emotional impact for the fans because we have grown and changed since the original Red album was released in 2012. Hearing the songs, we listened to at that age now with different life experiences and as older people really makes this such a unique experience. Knowing that Taylor put this out the way she wanted, not the way her management had her do it in the past, makes so many of us so happy for her and how far she has come as an artist.
You can tell how much Taylor’s fourth album means to her with everything she did leading up to Red’s release that she did not do for the release of “Fearless (Taylor’s Version).” She collaborated with Starbucks on a drink, directed a short film for the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” put out extensive collections of “Red” merchandise, went on “SNL” and other talk shows, put out a music video for the song from the vault, “I Bet You Think About Me” and was extremely interactive with fans on TikTok in the months leading up to Red’s release.
Even the empire state building glowed red in honor of #RedTaylorsVersion. This album embodies the season of Fall, and I am glad she waited until now to release it. The five-month build-up makes it even more special to hear after so long. Give this album a listen and make sure any Red songs you listen to have “(Taylor’s Version)” following their title.