Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Taylor's Version)
Taylor Swift
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
Release Date: July 7, 2023
Label: Republic
Review by Jared Stossel
Three seconds into Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’s first song, “Mine”, you can hear the maturity in Taylor Swift’s voice after thirteen years. Many have accused her of being a shy, damsel-in-distress-type of woman, who uses men and broken relationships as a treasure trove of songwriting material. After listening to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) – the latest entry in Swift’s ongoing plan to rerecord her first six albums and take back control of owning her masters – these claims couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in a weakened state on a song like “Dear John”, Swift is an assertive and powerful songwriter, using her craft as a means to take back the power from those that have hurt her along the way. Thirteen years later, Speak Now: Taylor’s Version manages to do just that, both from a lyrical and symbolic standpoint.
From a production perspective, Swift found herself working with a variety of producers that have been partnering with her over the past several years like Jack Antonoff (Bleachers), Aaron Dessner (The National), and Christopher Rowe, a producer specializing in country rock production that has helped bring her re-recorded versions of Fearless and Red to life. The original Speak Now album was co-produced by Swift and country producer Nathan Chapman, and it was a great recording upon its initial release. Antonoff, Dessner, and Rowe haven’t messed too much with the original composition, instead bringing certain elements to the forefront - more violin on “Sparks Fly, for example.
Fairy tale love is only one side of the coin that makes up Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), as songs like the aforementioned “Sparks Fly” and “Enchanted” feel like the soundtrack to fabled storybook romances coming to life. Swift has always been an excellent storyteller, whether she’s writing about the remembrance of love gone by (“Mine”) or writing a letter to herself (“Never Grow Up”). Her storytelling abilities are at their peak on songs like the title track, where she imagines a scenario in which she causes the groom at a wedding to leave the bride at the altar, the two of them riding off into the sunset. We’re rooting for her the entire time. It’s no wonder that she’s interested in making movies.
Swift often writes of “what-if” scenarios like the one presented in “Speak Now”, whether she’s imagining what would happen if she and her ex would walk across the room to talk to each other (“The Story of Us”) or if she said hello to a prospective new love (“Enchanted”). Her use of description is perhaps at its best on the heart-wrenching “Last Kiss”, the second-to-last song on the original album that recalls wanting to relive the moments of a lost love over and over again, before being slapped in the face by a reality in which she’ll “sit on the floor wearing your clothes/All that I know is I don’t know/How to be something you miss”.
Acoustic-driven ballads and break-up hymns like “Last Kiss” and the epic “Dear John” make up the other side of the Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) coin, and Swift conjures a palpable sense of loss, translating it from the paper to the microphone with ease. And it doesn’t have to be heartbreak either; “Never Grow Up”, a song that initially feels like a letter to oneself, feels like a love letter to the innocence of childhood that has faded over time. Simultaneously, Swift is able to take moments of heartbreak and make them vibrant and loud, such as on “Haunted”, one of the rock-centric tracks on the album. It’s not a ballad, but a declaration of love and an admission of defeat.
But just because Swift is down at moments doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of realizing her vulnerabilities. “Back to December”, the album’s third track, finds her apologizing to the subject of her affections, regretting how a breakup ended. She admits her humanity and faults, more than most of us can. She continues to take the high road on “Innocent”, a song that was written about the incident in 2009 that would play out as tabloid fodder for over a decade. In an era where re-recordings allow the creators to omit and reshape lyrics based on modern times, I’m quite impressed that she changed very little here, considering all the damage that said person has done both privately and publicly to those around them.
Instead, the revenge-driven songs are upbeat affairs, like the country-infused “Mean” or the pop-punk-inspired “Better Than Revenge” bubbles with confidence and authority. “Mean” is the ultimate “fuck you” to the guys that never leave their hometown (the one whose probably reading this on his phone at the local dive bar, still not getting that he’s an asshole), while “Better Than Revenge” has proven to be the catalyst for songs like Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U”, writing with ire about an ex’s new girl. Swift changed one of the lyrics purposefully, revoking the initial “slut-shaming” in the first song. With little gestures like this, Swift has shown how much she has grown over this last decade, both as a songwriter and a person.
The final song on the original album is “Long Live”, a track written about the moment that she won a Grammy, and how grateful she is for her team. “It was the end of a decade, but the start of an age” is a powerful line in this song; I don’t think that Swift or her team could comprehend just how bright of a shining star she would become at the time of releasing this album. I bet it felt indescribable to re-record this song, looking back at everything that has happened in the last thirteen years.
As is typical with any of the “Taylor’s Version” re-releases, the album doesn’t stop here. Both bonus tracks from Speak Now (“Ours” and “Superman”) received the re-record treatment, the former speaking on the topic of not caring about people’s perception of a relationship in the public spotlight, while the former compares a boy to the “Man of Steel” with a country flare.
Additionally, Swift pulled six tracks “From The Vault” and gave them her all, with features from artists like Fall Out Boy and Hayley Williams of Paramore that have been making emo hearts swoon the world over. The Fall Out Boy-featured track, “Electric Touch”, tackles the jitters that accompany any first date. Williams’ contribution to “Castles Crumbling” deals with the fear of a legacy tarnishing and fading over time. Even at the top of the world, it’s clear that this feeling is still possible. The inclusion of Williams here is perfect, considering that Paramore found itself getting bigger while feeling like they alienated their older fanbases as their sound evolved. The dream-like feel makes this a standout entry on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
“When Emma Falls In Love” is a sweet piano ballad that hypes up a friend falling in love (“‘Cause she’s the kind of book you can’t put down”), while “I Can See You” invokes the what-if scenario under the guise of a dreamy indie rock vibe, with a bridge that feels like a spiritual sequel to “You Belong With Me.”
There is a beautiful sense of irony behind the fact that the track following “Castles Crumbling” is “Foolish One”. As someone who grew up with bands like Paramore and Fall Out Boy, the placement of this song after one that features the band that wrote “The Only Exception” is an outstanding juxtaposition (“But then the voices say, You are not the exception/You will never learn your lesson). The song covers the topic of doubt and setting expectations about your love life, about pining for someone yet feeling foolish for it (“Stop checking your mailbox/For confessions of love that ain’t never gonna come”). The album closes with “Timeless”, a love song about another life imagined through the antique photos, the items themselves acting as time capsules and creating new stories. Even pre-Folklore, Swift was exercising her storytelling muscles.
Speak Now was an extraordinary record when it was released in 2010, and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) further proves that it’s an extraordinary record now. Nothing in life is ever guaranteed, but the release of Speak Now all but confirmed that Taylor Swift was a bona fide country superstar. This would be her last true “country” album before invoking more pop sensibilities on Red, then fully making the jump on 1989. But the writing was on the walls all along; she was, and always will be, a certified superstar.
