Transitional Growing Pains: The Revitalized ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’

By Turi Sioson

The first Taylor Swift concert I ever attended was the Speak Now World Tour. It was exactly a year and a day after the release of Swift’s third studio album, and the singer-songwriter was not yet 22 when she took the stage before me.

On July 7, at The Eras Tour show turned Speak Now (Taylor's Version) release party, when Swift brought out her original Speak Now World Tour koi fish guitar, the present and past overlapped; despite being two days shy of 22, I was suddenly 10 years old again.

By now, you’ve probably heard at least a snippet or two of Swift’s recently released Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the third installment in the singer-songwriter’s string of re-records — a project Swift began in an effort to reclaim her “stolen” music, as fans have nicknamed the original albums released under Big Machine Records.

For me, Speak Now soundtracked both my exploration into finding my written voice while navigating my awkward, fearful years approaching teenhood. It was transitional, slipping out of being a carefree child and into not knowing what to do with my sprouting limbs and timid demeanor. At the same time, Speak Now characterized Swift’s transition into being taken more seriously as an artist, as she simultaneously navigated the growing pains of her first years of adulthood.

With the placement of Taylor’s Version, the album is once again defining a pivotal moment in Swift’s career: the re-release marks the halfway point in her effort to finally own her past catalog spanning from her debut (2006) to her 2017 comeback, reputation. Coincidentally (or intentionally, knowing Swift’s love of synchronicity), it is also the first to be put out following Midnights, which pushed Swift’s album discography into the double digits.

The re-release made her the first woman in history to have four albums simultaneously in the Top 10 of Billboard 200; she’s now the woman with more No. 1 albums on the aforementioned chart than any in history, surpassing Barbra Streisand’s previous record. With a new tour for the first time in five years, celebrating her 10 albums and their accompanying “eras,” and an industry respect that puts her on top of the world, Swift could go anywhere she chooses from here.

Entirely self-written (albeit one co-written song, “If This Was A Movie,” which was released as an addendum to Fearless (Taylor’s Version) instead), Swift’s third studio album grapples with situations and themes that fans and the general public had yet to hear from the then 20-year-old singer-songwriter. In contrast to the teenage tinge of Fearless, songs like “Sparks Fly” and “Enchanted,” though they still carry the tone of being written by a bright-eyed young woman freshly exiting girlhood, these songs don’t hold the watchful gaze of parents in the way that songs such as “Love Story” and “Fifteen” do.

With pensive tracks such as “Innocent,” challenging ones such as “Mean,” and petty, rage-filled ones such as “Better Than Revenge,” Swift had begun approaching conflict not only in her relationships or imagined ones, but in her career, expanding the reach of her artistry and showing us in real time what it feels like to be growing up past childhood.

“When I think back on the Speak Now album, I get a lump in my throat,” Swift writes in her intimate prologue to the fans who purchase the physical copy of the re-release. “I have a feeling it will always be that way, because this period of time was so vibrantly aglow with the last light of the setting sun of my childhood.”

Where the original 2010 release was glittery and girlish, characterized by tentative adulthood and budding maturity, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) feels polished and self-aware, heavy with nostalgia and hindsight in a way that Swift’s previous re-recordings haven’t, making it an emotional listen for those of us who let the original album hold us through the harshest changes of adolescence.

Though many of the most painful tracks have lost their original raw edge (“Last Kiss” is missing its famous shaky breath; the way Swift sings “Haunted” makes it clear she is no longer haunted by the experience; even “Dear John” sounds tamer than the original), Swift’s stronger, more mature and masterful vocals give the songs an unparalleled presence.

Time and distance have transformed these experiences for both Swift and listeners — from the first “ah ah ah ah”s of opening track “Mine,” I was emotional; I no longer experience Speak Now in the way I did as a child, and it's clear that Swift no longer does, either.

Among the six “vault tracks” — previously unheard songs that didn't make the original cut — “I Can See You” stands out with its sexual charge and seduction. Like a siren tempting an unsuspecting sailor, Swift sings, “What would you do if we never made a sound?” and shares the fantasy that preoccupies her mind: “I can see you / Up against the wall with me.” It's a jaw-dropping track to hear on an album that has for so long been associated with innocence and naivete, yet it speaks to the exact experience of raging hormones that nearly every 18 to 20-year-old has gone through.

Though for Fearless and Red I was shocked that the vault tracks didn't make the original album, the delay in the release of Speak Now’s appended songs feels necessary. Swift’s mature vocals compliment the “Nothing New” sister “Castles Crumbling”,featuring Paramore’s Hayley Williams. Had the girlish but adorable “Timeless” and “When Emma Falls in Love” been placed on the original, I'm not sure they would've gotten the attention they deserve. With crystal-clear hindsight, they are given context that make lyrics such as “Used to chant my name / Now they’re screaming that they hate me / Never wanted you to hate me” (“Castles Crumbling”) more emotional to hear than they would've been back in 2010.

In the re-record of “Better Than Revenge,” the teen rage track directed at the girl who her ex cheated on her with, Swift edits her unhinged anger, cutting the beloved lyric, “She’s better known for the things that she does / on the mattress,” and replacing it with “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches.” This lyric conveys emotions more reminiscent of a woman grown both in maturity and poetic skill.

As a kid, I used to fall on my bed dramatically to that mattress lyric, ignorant of the true meaning of the line. I was ready to hate the change, devastated by the news that leaked just a handful of hours before the album's official release.

But why shouldn't Swift change it? Rolling Stone’s Larisha Paul argued that “changing the past now, or using it to make some grand feminist statement, would not only feel dishonest, but it would also compromise her goal of draining all of the value from her original recordings after they were tossed around and sold without her permission,” but isn't bigger goal to do what feels right to Swift?

In keeping with Speak Now’s central theme — to speak truthfully and unabashedly — the lyric change gives Swift a chance to right a wrong, and to recreate her album in a way that makes her wholly proud of it. To me, it would feel dishonest and disingenuous for her not to give the lyric a rework, when she has clearly felt for years that it needed one. The re-releases are not just about reclaiming Swift’s past — they are also a way for her to fortify her present.

At The Eras Tour Speak Now release show, surrounded by fans adorning pink and purple outfits, Swift took the stage to perform “Enchanted,” the tour’s resident Speak Now song, for the first time owning it. Entering the stage backed by purple flowers and pink, glittery visuals, donning a brand new three-tiered purple gown, the energy and emotion was something special, made even more so when the crowd realized Swift was not leaving the stage after the song was over — signaling the first surprise of the night, which Swift had promised during the opening Lover set.

“There's one more song from Speak Now that we just have to play tonight,” Swift said, before launching into the first Eras Tour performance of “Long Live.” Her performance of a track that the singer-songwriter has repeatedly remarked is about the fans felt like a full-circle moment. As she sang “The night you danced like you knew our lives would never be the same,” Swift’s band joined her on stage, lining up in the same way many of them originally did during the Speak Now World Tour performance of the song, one that I missed as a kid, having left the concert early so my mom could beat the traffic home.

We sang along at the top of our lungs, and even the band was mouthing the lyrics with big grins on their faces. With a single song, Swift brought the magic of our past into the charm of the present.

The production of Taylor’s Version includes Swift’s same live band, giving the album a sense of intimacy that the original, in all its cherished glory, just couldn't capture. Their playing styles and instruments are so recognizable after all these years of listening that when I played “Story of Us” for my dad, he immediately recognized Swift’s live drummer, Matt Billingslea, and guitarist, Paul Sidoti, in an even shorter amount of time than it took me to realize.

After the addition of “Long Live” to The Eras Tour setlist, I had already cried the majority of my purple eyeliner off, but when Swift later surprised us with the first-ever live performance of “Never Grow Up,” changing the closing lyrics to “And even though you have to, please try to never grow up,” I lost the rest of it.

How lucky are we to get to relive the release of an album so central to so many of our upbringings? At the same time, how painful it is to know that — at least for the time being — the original has been lost to the greed of others?

For many, Speak Now carries special significance in more ways than one. When the album was first released, I was clueless about relationships and terrified knowing that I would one day have to leave my childhood bed. I was just discovering the power of my pen, and Speak Now was the guidebook I used to experiment with my creativity through (subpar) songwriting. It was the album that launched me into the fandom — I spent hours on my mom’s computer building the perfect Taylor Connect profile and collecting music video gifs from its forums. I associated “Innocent” with the aftermath of fights with my mom and “Mean” with bullies at school; Swift sings my birthday in “Last Kiss,” and “Back to December” provided endless daydreaming material for romances I imagined I would one day have.

Carrying the CD lyric booklet to school at the cusp of my preteenhood, I bonded with a student teacher over our favorite songs (“Mine” and “Ours” for me, “Sparks Fly” and “Dear John” for her). She was the age I am now, and I envied her for being at the same stage in life as Taylor Swift.

Standing at The Eras Tour show, nearly 13 years older than the me who first heard Speak Now, I was experiencing the album not just as the little girl who still lives inside me, but as a young woman who has not yet learned how to own her true self. The revitalized re-release is not only a masterful reminder of the past, but a magical reconnection to the truth we hold within ourselves. ♦