Tenley Tuschman- Feature Edtior
This past year for all of the Swifties out there has been a gift from God. Throughout the past ten months, we have gotten two brand new albums (both of which were announced the same day they were released) as well as an announcement on February 11th that she would be rerecording her first six albums. For those of you who don’t know why she is doing this, her former record label Big Machine was sold to Ithaca Holding, an umbrella company owned by Scooter Braun (ugh). Taylor has reported that she was unaware of the sale to Braun’s company and is rerecording in an effort to regain artistic and financial control of her material. On April 9th, Swift released her first re-recorded album titled Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
Fearless will always hold a special place in my heart. I remember being a little girl, sitting in my room listening to “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story” and dreaming of the perfect boy falling in love with me. Flash forward 13 years and I get to listen to those songs all over again and it really is like the first time. The first thing I noticed when I listened through the album was the maturity of her vocals. It is super evident that she has grown a lot as a singer over the past decade. She’s not only a stronger singer, but is able to control her vocals a lot more and hit notes that she was definitely not able to hit when she first recorded the album at 18.
Each song on the album is so good and has so much more meaning to it now that she truly owns her own music. Some of my favorite parts of the album include her laugh in “Hey Stephen” (Taylor’s Version), the lyrics from “Fifteen” (Taylor’s Version) where she talks about wishing you could go back and tell yourself what you know now (I mean come on, there’s no way that doesn’t make you emotional knowing all that she has been through), and the vocals in “You Belong With Me” (Taylor’s Version) which somehow made me love the song even more than I already did. And of course, arguably one of the greatest scream worthy songs of all time “The Way I Loved You” (Taylor’s Version) sounded amazing and is continuously on a loop in my head. BUT THERE’S MORE! Not only did she re-release the original tracklist, she also included six songs from the vault that were never released on the original album. All of these songs are special in itself, but there is definitely one that sticks out. That would be “Mr. Perfectly Fine” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault). Taylor wrote this song in 2008 about her relationship with Joe Jonas that ended with him breaking up with her over the phone. This song is a masterpiece. It’s so catchy, so fun, so lyrically wonderful and just the petty breakup song that we all needed. 2008 could not have handled the power of this song. So at this point, I expect that you’re already streaming the album and loving every second of it, but if you’re not, go listen to Fearless (Taylor’s Version) of course!
Southview Catalyst 