It was the summer of 2009. I had just bought a copy of Fearless (wow, a CD) after becoming enchanted by “Love Story” blaring through the speakers of Duane Reade and everywhere else I went in New York City. And I was falling in love – both with the person who would become my husband and Taylor Swift.

One day, a friend raised the topic of “Love Story” and firmly declared, “There’s no way she wrote this song by herself.” At the time, I considered it to be just one person’s weird and casually cruel comment. Little did I know, this was a widely held belief of many Americans and critics alike. Although Fearless earned Taylor her first Album of the Year award from the GRAMMYs, there was an inkling of doubt about her strength as a songwriter looming large in the collective unconscious.

Taylor has said herself that writing Speak Now, her follow-up to Fearless, was a vindicating endeavor. She set out to write an entire record on her own – without any co-writers – mostly to prove that she could. The resulting masterpiece was an album spanning genres and influences, with enduring standout hits like “Mean” and “Mine,” whose easy, breezy, rolls-off-the tongue lyric of “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter” continues to be considered one of her best lines ever even today.

In this (extremely long!) review, I cover a few considerations about the original Speak Now album, including its unique status as one of two wholly eclectic Taylor Swift albums to date; her revised delivery on the Taylor’s Version album given her career stature; observations about what may have drove her to record an entire album that’s outside her natural singing range; and a working hypothesis that the vault tracks are in fact blueprints for her future work.

A multi-genre album

One aspect of Speak Now that received little attention upon its release was the wide variety of sounds that appeared on the album. Unlike her previous albums to date, which had a core country sound, Speak Now reflected many genres – ranging from the descendant of Ellie Greenwich’s “Be My Baby” energy in “Speak Now” to pure pop in “Sparks Fly” and even a little bit of rock with “Better Than Revenge” – and yet it was labeled a “country” album at the time.

In my view, the genre-spanning breadth of Speak Now stands out among her body of work as we know it today. Only Lover – her first album that was hers from the jump – touches on so many different sounds and styles. (Some may say evermore reads as eclectic, but I consider it to be experimental.) Every other album – spanning from her debut through Midnights – features a fondant-like wrapper around it, imbuing a uniform sound and smoothed-over experience for the listener that transcends production and is deeply felt at the center of each song. It’s no surprise that, upon her first chance to strike out on her own, she ended up demonstrating her breadth across genres with Speak Now, serving as a kind of roadmap for her future work. As a reminder, Taylor Swift is the only artist to have won Album of the Year in three separate genres (Fearless, country; 1989, pop; and folklore, alternative).

And now we have Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) – henceforth known as SN TV in this review – to consider. SN TV contains all the tracks from the original Speak Now (Deluxe) (“OG SN” henceforth) as well as six previously unheard “From the Vault” tracks. Although the vast majority of songs are identical to the OG SN, this album is labeled as “pop” in Apple Music (see for yourself). I imagine the inclusion of the vault tracks – namely “Electric Touch” and “I Can See You,” which both feel influenced by the indie rock du jour while Taylor was writing SN TV – pushed the whole album over the edge into the miscellaneous category of pop. Yet my hypothesis stands that the album cannot be captured by one single genre label.

Spot the difference: She has arrived

Early reviews of SN TV suggest Taylor’s “adult voice” – richer, fuller, and a bit deeper than her OG SN voice – leaves something to be desired. I attribute these observations to be picking up on the way she’s delivering the lyrics, meaning her whole vocal approach and new sensibility about the songs, rather than her actual voice itself.

With the OG SN, Taylor was on the offense. The earliest tracks were written when she was 18 and she was barely an adult when she recorded it, having been severely stung by media backlash (already then) and imperious provocateurs (Kanye West, et al). In interviews back then, she attributed the album title to the need to just say something. This driving force showed up in her vocals – emphatic, dramatic, pitchy, elongating. Decades later, the world is different. She is different. And she knows very well that she has nothing left to prove.

Take a song like “Mean,” a rallying cry for those who’ve dealt with bullies. Like so many Taylor Swift songs, “Mean” uses textured specificity about her own situation, yet the effect is universal. On the OG SN, her singing is taut and angsty. You can hear her stressing “and a liar” like that friend who always says I told you so. When she played “Mean” on the album’s tour and awards shows, she’d get to the bridge – “Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things / Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing” – nail the note on “sing,” and give a pregnant pause and a theatrical look that communicated are you serious? before heading triumphantly into the outro.

In contrast, her vocals on the SN TV rendition of “Mean” are pragmatic and straightforward, and there’s no wink-wink, nudge-nudge going on. She even lowers the emotional temperature of the song once she gets to the outro, changing up the chord progression to match that of the first turn of the chorus.

We also hear defused vocal delivery on “Innocent,” a track widely considered to be about Kanye West as an olive branch for that whole VMA debacle. On the OG SN, she’s earnest and sharp. Here, as an older, wiser, and self-actualized person, she’s detached and cool, delivering the lines in a way that suggests she appreciates her craft while also no longer feeling the need to be perceived a certain way just for existing.

Taken together, her revised vocal approach across SN TV reflects an artist who is comfortable knowing she has arrived. The emotional verve that formed the effect of the OG SN is no longer necessary or warranted, and she wants us to know that.

Out of range

Although Taylor’s older, fuller voice results in an improvement on a few tracks – namely “Speak Now” where the original sounded pitchy to me – the OG SN tracks on the new album continue to be way out of her comfortable vocal range. With the exception of “Last Kiss,” all of the songs start down here and eventually land up there. Consider “Enchanted,” which starts low in her range and pushes her beyond what we now know to be her comfort zone.

You may recall some of the prominent female singers at the turn of 2010, among them Rihanna and Beyonce, whose high-pitch shriek sends me off the deep end. While not my personal cup of tea, these women were making waves and plenty of money. Part of me wonders if Taylor felt a need to conform to the range of her contemporaries, for the sake of broad appeal or because of what were perceived as commercial risks in having a more confined vocal range.

Incidentally, her vocals are at ease and in her comfort zone across the SN TV vault tracks, which, given the industry landscape at the time, may be in part why they landed in the vault instead of on the OG SN.

In the vein of knowing her worth – she is “The Man” after all and one of the richest female performers on the planet these days – we’ve seen few songs take her to that out-of-reach range over the past three or so years. “Cruel Summer” off Lover notwithstanding – and given the constant-loop of Eras tour videos in the ether, we know she’s not singing those high notes anyway – the vast majority of her songs, in particular on folklore, evermore, and Midnights, sit in that comfort zone for her, even encouraging her to dig deeper instead of going higher (think of “cardigan” here).

From the Vault: Blueprints for her future work

In interviews with Taylor, she’s said that re-recording her first six albums is an exercise in reclaiming what’s rightfully hers. Now that we have three Taylor’s Version albums in the world, it appears the endeavor serves a larger goal: Demonstrating her strategy and intentionality for her career path.

Tracks labeled as “from the vault” are, according to Taylor, songs that were held back from the final cut of an album, with the intention of using them on the next album. Looking back at her body of work, we can see that the sonic chasm between one album and the next is relatively vast (think Red to 1989 and then to reputation; I recognize folklore and evermore share a similar spirit and they are an exception in her catalogue sequence). So it’s only logical that these extra songs ended up collecting dust on a digital shelf somewhere. Taylor has said she recognizes these vault tracks belong in the time they were written – among the Era that spawned them – thus we’ve had the opportunity to hear these long-forgotten songs from deep in the crypt on the first three Taylor’s Version albums she’s released.

In my view, the vault tracks are actual blueprints for her future work – the careful maps she uses to build the next concept, the next turn of phrase, the next style. For example, we first heard the phrase “casually cruel” used in “All Too Well” from Red, yet Taylor had been intending to use that phrase years earlier, during the Fearless Era, as evidenced by its use on “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” one of the Fearless TV vault tracks. On Lover, she invokes the Shakespearean idiom “all’s well that ends well” for the “first time,” when in fact it was part of the original rendition of “All Too Well,” the 10-minute masterpiece that’s been seared in our brains since the release of Red TV.

In a similar vein, we see the mastermind behind the masterpieces in the SN TV vault tracks, as well. I’ve selected three to tell this story.

“I Can See You”

There’s something refreshing about the apathy in Taylor’s opening utterances of “I Can See You” – simply “uh-uh, uh, uh” delivered without emotion – over a mid-aughts guitar line sent straight from Franz Ferdinand and their kin. The song is about seduction, in the most sensual of terms – “’Cause I see you waitin’ down the hall from me / And I could see you up against the wall with me” – and it’s really no surprise that this song revealing a sexed up Taylor Swift didn’t meet the criteria for her brand image at the time when the OG SN was released.

Around 2009 (and perhaps until very recently), Taylor was perceived as innocent, chaste, or even sexless. It was only when we got reputation that the world could see her as she’s long seen herself, apparently: someone who seduces and can be seduced. On “dress,” she sings:

Only bought this dress so you could take it off

Take it off

Carve your name in my bedpost

‘Cause I don’t want to be your best friend

(Side note: Weirdly, most reviews I read of reputation didn’t mention this shift in image at all, perhaps it went unnoticed or could not be believed.) Now that we’re in 2023, we have constant loops of Taylor performing “Vigilante Shit” from the Eras tour on TikTok, a routine rife with sexually explicit choreography. It’s simple, really: The world was not ready for a sexy Taylor Swift in 2010 and now we are.

The idea of a covert love affair was simmering in her for some time, as shown by the way the “I Can See You” story is mirrored in 1989’s “I Know Places.”

On the second verse of “I Can See You,” she sings:

And we kept everything professional

But something’s changed, it’s somethin’ I, I like [note: the delivery of “like” is approximately spoken, giving it a sexy vibe]

They keep watchful eyes on us

So it’s best that we move fast and keep quiet

You won’t believe half the things I see inside my head

Wait ’til you see half the things that haven’t happened yet

For Taylor and her lover on “I Can See You,” there’s an element of excitement in the need to keep their love affair undercover.

On “I Know Places,” the experience with concealing a love affair feels a bit more dire – likely due to the onslaught of public scrutiny of her personal life that transpired after the OG SN was released.

You stand with your hand on my waistline

It’s a scene, and we’re out here in plain sight

I can hear them whisper as we pass by

It’s a bad sign, bad sign

Something happens when everybody finds out

See the vultures circling, dark clouds

Love’s a fragile little flame, it could burn out

It could burn out

‘Cause they got the cages, they got the boxes

And guns

They are the hunters, we are the foxes

And we run

What’s interesting to me is that even in 2008/2009, Taylor – who was often portrayed as someone who made her love affairs very public – could peer into the crystal ball of her future life and see that keeping love a secret was essential (“Romance is not dead if you keep it just yours,” she sings on “Paris” from Midnights (3 am)).

“Castle Crumbling”

In this duet with Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Taylor sings about a fall from grace, likely based on her experience once the media turned on her in the wake of the Kanye West VMAs experience. (Perhaps it’s not so much that the media turned on her, but certainly the media didn’t support her after that either.)

Castle is an intentional metaphor for Taylor, a recurring motif in her prior work, such as “Love Story” (including the memorable video for the song). Even as recently as Midnights, she invokes the idea of a castle, portraying it as her future state in the Cinderella-esque telling of “Bejeweled” from its music video.

Yet, in both the lyrics of “Castles Crumbling” and in her later work – namely from reputation – the fairy tale castle is actually more like a fortress to her, or even Foucault’s panopticon. On its face, the castle may be the site of love and happy endings, but for Taylor, it’s more like a trap, which may speak to the existential prison she lives in due to her extraordinary celebrity status.

In the lead single off reputation, “Look What You Made Me Do” – a song about revenge – Taylor invokes the idea of a castle/fortress/panopticon:

I (I) don’t (don’t) like your kingdom keys (keys)

They (they) once belonged to me (me)

You (you) asked me for a place to sleep

Locked me out and threw a feast (what?)

Later on the reputation track list, on “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” she alludes to a fortress yet again:

So why’d you have to rain on my parade?

I’m shaking my head, I’m locking the gates

On “Castles Crumbling,” written nearly a decade before reputation, she is already seeing the “castle” as more of a confining experience:

People look at me like I’m a monster

Now they’re screamin’ at the palace front gates

Used to chant my name

Now they’re screaming that they hate me

Never wanted you to hate me

Given the subject matter of this song, it is not at all surprising to me that it was excluded from the OG SN. For me, it changes the meaning of the entire album, and is contradictory to the earnest spirit of “Long Live,” which celebrates her connection with her fans. In contrast to “Long Live,” Taylor communicates her harmful experience in the public eye on “Castles Crumbling.” Now that we have both tracks to consider, we can see that her relationship with her fans creates a double-edged sword for her, as many great things in life do. At once, she feels deeply connected and gratified by her fans, and also sees the burden of responsibility in living up to a superhuman standard she, as a mortal, cannot attain.

She may have recognized the dissonance in public perception of her if “Castles Crumbling” sat alongside a song like “Speak Now” on the OG SN. What could the media narrative possibly be if these two songs shared a tracklist in 2010?

“Timeless”

I get the sense people see “Timeless” as a throwaway track on SN TV, but it’s worth paying attention to. It recounts the experience of the narrator finding old photos at an antique store that show random lovers enjoying one another, drawing out a story line of what may be characters. The first turn of the chorus goes:

On a crowded street in 1944

And you werе headed off to fight in the war

You still would’ve been mine

We would have been timeless

Telling stories of others is not unfamiliar ground for Taylor in the OG SN Era. From her debut album, “Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)” also invoked the voice of real or imagined characters – that is, of experiences that are not hers – but it felt like an unusual track on an album that led with biographical songwriting. In the song, she sings:

She said, I was seven and you were nine

I looked at you like the stars that shine

In the sky, the pretty lights

And our daddies used to joke about the two of us

Growing up and falling in love and our mamas smiled

And rolled their eyes and said oh my my my

It’s evident writing through the lens of someone else’s experience has been an area of interest and prowess for Taylor. It wasn’t until we got folklore – an album whose central thematic premise is other people’s stories – that people stopped and said, “Wow, she can write about someone else – and really well!” (Reminder: folklore earned Taylor her third Album of the Year award.)

What we see in “Timeless” is that her ability to portray the lives of others through compelling vignettes has always been part of her skillset. Taylor Swift is, and always has been, an expert of the human condition.

On a personal note, “Timeless” is a deeply affecting song for me because it captures the relationship I have with my husband in a way no other song ever has. Nicole’s version:

On a crowded street called Queens Boulevard

We met up one Sunday at an Irish bar

You would have been mine

We would have been timeless

I wrote a hundred emails to your address

And I counted, you didn’t send me less

You’re still gonna be mine.

We’re gonna be timeless.

**

SN TV is a triumphant record that continues weaving the tapestry that is Taylor Swift’s career story and body of work. We’re privileged she’s showing us her blueprints, and I can’t tell if I’m more excited for the next Taylor’s Version album or an entirely new release!

Bonus photo since you got to the end (Congratulations!).