Taylor Swift on Friday released a new version of 1989, the biggest album of her career that cemented her status as a pop musician, as she continues to re-record old hits to regain control over her work after most of the singer’s catalog was sold to a private equity firm without her consent.
Taylor Swift on the red carpet for the 56th Grammy Awards in 2014.
AFP via Getty Images
Key Takeaways
- Swift dropped 1989 (Taylor’s Version) at midnight Friday, nine years to the day from when the album was first released in 2014.
- The 21-track album includes re-recorded hits from the first album like “Shake it Off,” “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood,” which remain some of Swift’s biggest songs.
- The album also includes five previously unreleased songs from her “vault”—as she does in every re-recorded album—titled: “Slut!,” “Is It Over Now?,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Say Don’t Go” and “Suburban Legends.”
- “This album I love so dearly,” Swift wrote in a post on Instagram, adding that she was born in 1989, reinvented for the first time in 2014 and reclaimed a part of herself with the release of the re-recording now.
- Within hours of its release, “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” had climbed to the top of the U.S. iTunes album chart and lyric videos on YouTube had garnered hundreds of thousands of hits.
Key Background
The album is Swift’s fourth re-recorded release after she vowed to regain control of her music after Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings controversially acquired her back catalog in 2019 and later sold it to a private equity firm. Swift vocally opposed the acquisition, which she described at the time as her “worst case scenario” and said she had no say in or knowledge of. The strategy has proven remarkably successful and each release has been a huge hit.
Swift surprised fans in August with the news that 1989 was next, saying the album “changed my life in countless ways” and is her “most favorite re-record” so far because of the vault tracks. 1989 marked Swift’s definitive switch from country music to pop, scored Swift three Grammys and years after its debut remains her best-selling album, according to Billboard.
What To Watch For
The masters for Swift’s first six albums were sold and the singer is working on releasing re-recordings for the final two: her debut, “Taylor Swift,” and “Reputation.”
This article was first published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
