Culture

Taylor Swift explains why she remade Fearless ‘the way I’ve chosen to’ as emotional fans react

Taylor Swift on the Fearless (Taylor's Version) cover, looking to the right with her hair swept up in the wind

Taylor Swift has finally released Fearless (Taylor’s Version). (Taylor Swift)

Taylor Swift said her Fearless remake has made her “even more determined” to rerecord all her music, as fans indulge in six never-before-heard “From the Vault” tracks.

The star dropped Fearless (Taylor’s Version) on Friday (9 April), the first of six re-recorded albums she plans to create after her masters were sold.

The effort is a largely faithful recreation of the original, with all 19 tracks from the 2009 Platinum edition of Fearless, the 2010 soundtrack single “Today Was a Fairytale” and six “From the Vault” tracks written during the original album sessions.

When Taylor Swift first confirmed in 2019 that she would rerecord her back catalogue, it was widely assumed she’d start from the beginning. Instead, she jumped ahead to her second album, and now, she’s explained why.

Why did Taylor Swift remake Fearless first?

In the liner notes for Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift explains: “When I think back on the Fearless album and all that you turned it into, a completely involuntary smile creeps across my face.

“This was the musical era in which so many inside jokes were created between us, so many hugs exchanged and hands touched, so many unbreakable bonds formed. So before I say anything else, let me just say that it was a real honour to get to be a teenager alongside you.”

Fearless, Taylor Swift explained, “was an album full of magic and curiosity, the bliss and devastation of youth. It was the diary of the adventures and explorations of a teenage girl who was learning tiny lessons with every new crack in the facade of the fairytale ending she’d been shown in the movies”.

“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 continued.

“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. For example, only I know which songs I wrote that almost made the Fearless album. Songs I absolutely adored, but were held back for different reasons (don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too many down tempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical CD).”

Such issues “seem unnecessary now”, Swift added, describing “my Fearless album” as “the whole story” and admitting that the six “From the Vault” tracks “killed [her] to leave behind” originally.

“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all of my music,” she concluded. “I hope you’ll like this first outing as much as I liked travelling back in time to recreate it.”

As it turns out, fans really, really did.

https://twitter.com/IThinkWillKnows/status/1380433495265308674

https://twitter.com/delicatexsummer/status/1380404330264633344

https://twitter.com/falsegodlayla13/status/1380134289258524676

https://twitter.com/taylorpayp/status/1380390471822946306

https://twitter.com/headfirstrep/status/1380269680653393928

You can stream Fearless (Taylor’s Version) through Amazon Music here:

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