On October 27 Taylor Swift’s fourth re-recorded album was released, “1989 (Taylor’s Version).” The album contains 21 songs, including five vault tracks.
The inspiration behind Swift re-recording her albums stems from music executive Scooter Braun owning the rights to her first six albums.
By re-recording her earlier albums, Swift is able to gain the rights to her music. Owning her albums and songs allows her to receive the money from them and control how and when they are used.
The re-recorded albums, labeled “Taylor’s Version,” contain the original songs from the original albums and also include bonus tracks. These are songs from her “vault” that were unable to make it on the original album.
Some of the original songs have lyric changes and added volume to the main vocals.
In Swift’s newest re-release, “1989 (Taylors Version),” Swift added more bass to make some of the original songs sound more energetic. The album also featured five newly-released vault tracks.
“I thought the album was really good,” sophomore Savannah Washam said, “I liked the vault songs, I thought all of them were good but I felt like ‘Now That We Don’t Talk’ sounded more like ‘Midnights’ and didn’t fit the album very well. My favorite vault track is ‘Say Don’t Go’ because I thought that it fit the album very well and was like a natural extension of it.”
The re-recorded album led to Swift’s largest sales week ever and set the record for the largest week for any album in eight years.
The album became number one on the Billboard 200, becoming Swift’s 13th number one on the chart and putting her in third place for most No. 1s, tied with Drake, just behind The Beatles and Jay-Z.
“I’d give the album five out of five stars because I feel like since she re-released it, I was able to rediscover the less popular songs and I remembered how much I like the old songs,” Washam said, “I also really liked the vault songs.”
“The album is pretty mid to be honest,” sophomore Malcolm Cruz said, “I think she’s a little overrated for what she did. It was pretty much the same as the one before except for the new songs. It was alright, but there are better artists out there.”
Overall 97% of listeners enjoyed the album and Swift sold 250,000 albums on its release day alone. By the fifth day, sales reached over one million, becoming the top-selling album of 2023. It outsold the original 2014 album in the first week by over 400,000 units.
