The promotion process was essentially an Easter egg hunt for fans. Those who were present the first time around can now support her all over again. And Swift’s latest merchandise drop - “Taylor’s Version” shirts, hoodies, phone cases and key chains - establishes a new, meta “era” of Swift fandom and of the star’s own self-representation. Even the title, “Taylor’s Version,” pulls fans to her side. The release has been cast as a communal and celebratory experience for Swift and her fans, who can simultaneously relive the music as nostalgia and consume it as a vicarious act of empowerment.
Her teenage lyrics about broken promises and unfeeling betrayals take on an extra twist when applied to her former business partners.
And as a fun send-off, there’s a trance-y, thumping, gusty dance-floor remix of “Love Story.” Perhaps there’s a meta-narrative reason for starting with her second album rather than her debut.
The track list has been expanded even further - and connected to the present - with six previously unreleased songs, newly recorded with Swift’s collaborating producers on her 2020 quarantine albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. “ Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” is the first album of her reclamation project: a newly recorded version of the entire “platinum edition” of her second album, which was released in 2008. JON PARELES When the master recordings for Taylor Swift’s first six albums were sold along with her first label, Big Machine, to the manager Scooter Braun’s company, she announced she would remake them on her own terms (and for her own reward).