“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” Album Review
It’s not every day that you get to listen to your childhood album over again for the second time.
Taylor Swift, who has set tour records already this year, released “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” on July 7, the third re-recording of her masters.
“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” joins “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” and "Red (Taylor’s Version)” as the three albums previously owned (and sold) by Scooter Braun that Swift has re-released. Swift now owns seven out of the 10 albums in her discography, missing her debut album, “1989” and “reputation.”
“Speak Now” was originally released in 2010 and featured 14 songs on the album, plus three more on the deluxe version.
“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” includes all of those except for “If This Was A Movie,” which was placed on “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” plus six “vault tracks,” which didn’t make the cut of the original album. Note that the songs described in the rest of the article are Taylor’s Versions of the songs unless otherwise specified.
The album has always been about feelings of hopeless romanticism and adversity in the face of tragedy. Swift was 18 years old when she started working on the songs and 20 when the album came out and encompassed the end of the Fearless Tour, the aftermath of her VMAs, and her relationships with Taylor Lautner and John Mayer in her work.
The album holds all of the fun, upbeat favorites, including “Mine” and “Sparks Fly,” which are the first two tracks of the album. Off the bat, Swift’s voice sounds so much more mature and with key changes.
Then, ballads like “Back To December” and “Last Kiss” tie in with the breakup songs on the album, with the first rumored to be about Lautner and the second about Joe Jonas. While “Back To December” is certainly more known, “Last Kiss” has been underrated for a decade and will hopefully gain more mainstream listenership.
Due to the aftermath of the VMAs and criticism Swift received about “Fearless” and her songwriting ability, there’s also a need to prove critics wrong with this project. Swift wrote all of these songs by herself.
She addresses the Kanye West controversy in “Innocent,” where she sympathizes with the public outrage he received after interrupting her speech at the VMAs. Though Swift and West’s tumultuous battle didn’t stop in 2010, the song remains hopeful that people will want to make an effort to change.
Then, the fan-favorite “Enchanted,” which was the only song from the album to make the Speak Now set of Swift’s “The Eras Tour.”
Swift controversially changed the lyrics in “Better Than Revenge,” a song about a girl plotting revenge on another girl who took her boyfriend. The original lyrics, “she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” were swapped to “he’s like a moth to the flame / she was holding the matches.”
Swift has been an icon of female empowerment for decades, and though she hasn’t publicly addressed the drastic change, it’s probably to avoid criticism from the press for a lyric that scathes another woman.
The production on the album improved significantly, especially with “Haunted,” her darkest song on the record. When Swift sings, “I just know / you’re not gone,” new background vocals sing “I’m gone / I’m gone.”
Of course, “Long Live,” which is the ballad to her fans, remains one of the sentimental highlights of the album. Swift performed it as the last track of the “Speak Now World Tour” in 2011 and added it to the setlist for Night 1 of Kansas City.
After listening to the vault tracks, many fans were left wondering why they didn’t make the cut of the original album.
Sticking with the punk theme of the early 2010s, “Electric Touch” features Fall Out Boy and is a catchy song about vulnerability.
Swift wrote “When Emma Falls In Love” about Emma Stone, but fans are in a debate over whether the song is about Andrew Garfield or Kieran Culkin.
She describes Stone beautifully, like “a book you can’t put down” and “if Cleopatra grew up in a small town.”
“I Can See You” is the single off the album and is about a forbidden and secret relationship. It’s one of the tracks that sounds more pop than country, foreshadowing the genre switches to come.
“Castles Crumbling” with Hayley Williams follows the theme of the VMAs. Swift has publicly stated that she didn’t know that the crowd was booing West and instead thought they were booing her for her win.
It might be Swift’s most vulnerable bridge, with lyrics like “smoke billows from my ships in the harbor / people look at me like I’m a monster.”
Then, Swift calls out the hopeless romantics of the world in “Foolish One,” which is a soul-baring song about being the other woman.
The vault tracks end with “Timeless,” which was inspired by Swift and her mother visiting antique shops and picturing life as the people in the rusted picture frames. The song is so beautiful that it might replace “Lover” as people’s first dance song.
Swift has three more albums to re-record, and with the success of “The Eras Tour” expanding internationally, fans wonder how long Swift will stay with these albums instead of moving forward and making new music.
“Speak Now” was a pivotal album in Swift’s career and gave her a chance to prove herself to the naysayers, and “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” gives her that same opportunity to re-claim her narrative 13 years later.
Reviewer’s favorite songs: Haunted, Long Live, Foolish One, Castles Crumbling, Enchanted, Dear John and Last Kiss
Reviewer’s least favorite songs: Mean, Superman and When Emma Falls In Love
Rating: 9/10
Adrianna Gallucci is a rising second-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email amg7989@psu.edu.
