By: Sophia Elmstrom

“Taylor’s Version” is a term that is used widely among people around the world. It is a term that you yourself have for sure heard at some point.

You might be asking yourself what it is, well here is the short answer: re-recorded albums. Taylor’s Version is when Taylor Swift re-records her albums that she has had released for a while and calls them Taylor’s Version.

This all started in 2019 when her producer, Scooter Braun, and the label he worked with sold all of Taylor’s music without her permission. Taylor had decided to fight back and gain all her music back, she re-recorded it and re-released it with the name of ‘Taylor’s Version’. Once Scooter sold all of her music that meant that all the income would come to him and the label instead of Taylor herself. Although Taylor surely does not need the money it is an ethical thing to do by streaming Taylor’s Version and showing support for her.

There were six albums that she would need to re-recorded once she made this decision; ‘Debut’, ‘Fearless’, ‘Speak Now’, ‘Red’, ‘1989’, and ‘Reputation’. Taylor first got the idea to record these when Kelly Clarkson, a talk show host and fellow pop star, suggested it. So far, Taylor has re-recorded 4 of the 6 albums and still has to release ‘Reputation’ and ‘Debut’.

Many Swifties have their own speculations about when these albums are coming out; they call them easter eggs. These Swifities will watch music videos, lyric videos, award shows, and concerts for clues about upcoming albums and songs. During the 2024 Grammys it was speculated that Taylor would announce ‘Reputation Taylor’s Version’ while she was winning the award. Instead the Swifties got something they never would have expected, a brand new album. This album is called ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.

Although every single one of these albums were a huge success and broke records, the one that broke the most records was ‘1989 Taylor’s Version’. ‘1989’ is an album many people grew up with and were very excited about, this caused it to break many impressive records such as the most single day streams ever for an album.

Included in the recordings of these albums there are some songs Taylor likes to call “vault tracks”. Vault tracks are songs that never made it on the original album; she has about 5 vault songs for each re-recording.

My favorite re-recording so far has been ‘Speak Now’, it is the most different to the original. Many Swifties think that is bad but I love that she was embracing her new voice and trying new things out. I also think that the vault songs for ‘Speak Now’ are the best: “Timeless”, “Electric Touch”, “When Emma Falls in Love”, “Castles Crumbling”, “Foolish One”, and “I Can See You”.

In my opinion, Taylor did a great job at claiming back her music and getting many people to support her.