Are you ready for it? Taylor Swift just released Red (Taylor’s Version), but fans are already thinking about which one of her early albums she’ll rerecord next.
The “State of Grace” singer embarked on a mission to rerecord her first six records in 2019 after losing control of her masters in a highly publicized battle with music manager Scooter Braun. The decision is about ownership, of course — whoever owns the masters gets paid for the music when it’s purchased, streamed or licensed — but the Pennsylvania native has also said it’s a matter of artistry.
“I’ve spoken a lot about why I’m remaking my first six albums, but the way I’ve chosen to do this will hopefully help illuminate where I’m coming from,” she wrote via Instagram in February 2021. “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”
The first Swift album to get the rerecording treatment was Fearless, originally released in November 2008. For Taylor’s Version, the Grammy winner added six tracks described as “from the vault,” including duets with Maren Morris and Keith Urban.
Despite the fact that Swift fans had already heard most of the album’s songs over a decade earlier, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) became her ninth album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 when it was released in April 2021. At the time, Billboard also noted that it would have done so even without selling a single copy because the album’s streaming numbers were so high.
Seven months later, the Cats actress gave her fans even more material to dive into with the release of Red (Taylor’s Version), the rerecorded edition of her beloved 2012 album. In addition to a 10-minute version of fan favorite “All Too Well,” the album included nine new tracks “from the vault” and an acoustic version of “State of Grace.”
On the day of the album’s release, the “Wildest Dreams” songstress thanked her fans for supporting her rerecording project. “It never would have been possible to go back & remake my previous work, uncovering lost art & forgotten gems along the way if you hadn’t emboldened me,” she tweeted in November 2021. “Red is about to be mine again, but it has always been ours. Now we begin again.”
Keep scrolling for a look at all the albums that could be next on Swift’s list:
After the surprise release of the "I Bet You Think About Me" music video, Speak Now rocketed to the top of the prediction list as the next album Swift might rerecord. The biggest alleged hint was the fact that the video was set at a wedding, which is also the backdrop for Speak Now's title track. Then there was the singer's red gown, which many fans interpreted as a callback to the cover photograph on the deluxe edition of Speak Now. One TikTok user — looking to 2020's "The Man" music video for clues — speculated that Speak Now (Taylor's Version) could come out in the last month of 2021 or would be announced by then. On her own TikTok account, Swift shared a clip from the "I Bet You Think About Me" shoot with the caption, "The chances of your wedding being ruined by a psychotic ex are low ... but never zero." Team Speak Now interpreted this as yet another reference to the October 2010 album's title track. Her aforementioned tweet was also cited as evidence to support this theory, as it included the words "mine" and "ours" — both of which are the names of tracks on Speak Now. Matt Sayles/AP/Shutterstock
The "I Bet You Think About Me" video also provided a few hints pointing at 1989, originally released in October 2014. The wedding cake included bird designs that looked very similar to the ones on the sweatshirt Swift wore on the cover of 1989, and it was red velvet. (The cake that Swift smashed in the "Blank Space" video was also red velvet.) In an even more subtle clue, Swift used the phrase "go down a rabbit hole" during a November 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, leading some fans to believe that she was making a veiled reference to the 1989 track "Wonderland." Charles Sykes/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
The musician's self-titled debut, released in October 2006, has not yet emerged as a likely contender for the next album to be rerecorded. It is, however, one of the most intriguing possibilities, given that it was both her first studio album and the release that sits most firmly in the country genre. Fans are eager to find out whether the rerecording remains faithful to the album's original sound, as Swift has done so far with Red (Taylor's Version) and Fearless (Taylor's Version). Matt Baron/Shutterstock
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