On October 22 2012, American singer Taylor Swift had released her “Red” studio album including hit songs such as “22” and “We are never ever getting back together”. However, much has changed over the course of a decade and Swift has announced that she would re-record her Red album and release it as her next album.
“I’ve always said that the world is a different place for the heartbroken. It moves on a different axis, at a different speed. Time skips backwards and forwards fleetingly. The heartbroken might go through thousands of micro-emotions a day trying to figure out how to get through it without picking up the phone to hear that old familiar voice”, Swift said on Instagram. “In the land of heartbreak, moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion are intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness. Imagining your future might always take you on a detour back to the past. And this is all to say, that the next album I’ll be releasing is my version of Red.”
The motive behind Swift’s decision is derived from Big Machine records, Swift’s previous record label. In 2020, Scooter Braun had owned the rights to Big Machine records, which he sold to an equity firm against Taylor’s will. Taylor was then forced to sign an agreement to “never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive”. Because the “Red” album belongs to Shammock Holdings, she decided to re-record the album to “express her feud” with the record label.
The album itself has been announced to contain 30 songs, one of which being 10 minutes long. Swift also expresses that the album will encapsulate a variety of feelings such as “Happy, free, confused, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past”.
We are truly looking forward to this album and Swift appears to be as well. “Like trying on pieces of a new life, I went into the studio and experimented with different sounds and collaborators”, says Swift. “And I’m not sure if it was pouring my thoughts into this album, hearing thousands of your voices sing the lyrics back to me in passionate solidarity, or if it was simply time, but something was healed along the way.”
