Revisiting the Original Taylor Swift Albums (As A Very Nostalgic Swiftie)

It's finally legal to listen to the original six Taylor Swift albums again!*

*Note: It was never actually illegal, but it did feel illegal morally.

I've been a fan of Taylor Swift since 2011, but I've been listening to her for as long as I can remember. Growing up in the south, her country singles like "Teardrops On My Guitar," "Love Story," "You Belong With Me," and "Mean" were always cycling on the radio. But I didn't really notice her until I came across her song "Safe & Sound" made with the Civil Wars for The Hunger Games soundtrack.

After listening to that song twelve billion times, I went and listened to her back catalogue, which at the time was only three albums. I didn't really care for the country-leaning self-titled album or Fearless, but I absolutely fell in love with the magic of Speak Now. Then, Taylor released Red, my then-favorite album from her (now in second place), and I was a Swiftie for life.

When Taylor Swift announced that she would be re-recording her first six albums, I continued to listen to the versions I owned on iTunes. However, as each album came out with a re-recording, I dropped the original sooner or later. With Fearless, I didn't listen to the original as much to begin with so it was like listening to a brand new album. With Red, I stopped listening on the day of the re-recording's release. And with Speak Now and 1989, I put a pause on listening as soon as they were announced at The Eras Tour. Now, I have the freedom to listen to them all again and pick which versions I like better. Some come on the journey with me as I listen to some Taylor Swift songs for the first time in years!

1989

How can I say I prefer the original without screaming it from the rooftops? I think that, of all the Taylor's Versions, this album was the most butchered. It was going to be hard to recreate the amazing work that Max Martin and Shellback had done, but I do appreciate Taylor and Christopher Rowe for trying.

Off the bat, I already love most original versions more than others. The youthful hope of Welcome To New York just fit her younger vocals better, and Blank Space is just iconic. There were some songs like Style, Out of the Woods (how do you mess up your own song, Jack??), I Know Places, and New Romantics in which I thought they had been poorly replicated, and hearing the original versions was a blessing to my ears. I definitely prefer the versions of Shake It Off and How You Get The Girl without that annoying microwave beeping sound in the choruses, and I never got to listen to a copy of re-recorded Sweeter Than Fiction that wasn't ripped off of a vinyl so I prefer the original by default. However, there are songs like Wildest Dreams and This Love (one of which the original producers returned for) that have outdone the originals. All in all, there is a reason 1989 is called the Pop Bible.

Version I'm Sticking With: Original (Except for Wildest Dreams and This Love)

Red

While I became a Swiftie during Speak Now, Red was the album and era I got to experience from start to finish with the rest of the world. I remember buying the CD, constantly playing it and dancing around my room, and talking about it with my friends. This, to me, is the most nostalgic Taylor Swift album.

Red was a harder listen, not because I liked the Taylor's Version better, but because I missed it so much. State of Grace is my second favorite Taylor song ever, so hearing the original again after so many years just made me cry like a baby. The singles I Knew You Were Trouble, 22, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together are just so much more punchy! And the emotion in her sadder songs, particularly All Too Well and Sad Beautiful Tragic just couldn't be replicated. A lot of the songs I had stopped liking because I didn't like how they were remade, like Red, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, and Everything Has Changed. There were also songs I just didn't like until I heard their respective Taylor's Versions: Come Back...Be Here and Girl At Home (and besides, Elvira's pop version is so much better).

Version I'm Sticking With: Original! (Except for Come Back...Be Here and Girl At Home)

Speak Now

There was always something lacking with the re-recording of Speak Now. The magic of Sparks Fly, the playfulness of Speak Now, the polite rage of Mean, the not-so-polite rage of Better Than Revenge, I could go on. While I think 1989 got the worst treatment production-wise, Speak Now sounds the worst vocally. It seems like the sessions of re-recording Speak Now were sometime during the end of the relationship between Taylor and Joe Alwyn, which likely affected to recreate these songs.

My favorite songs from my childhood were Mine and Ours, and upon relistening I felt the love for them that I had lost immediately flood back. Sparks Fly is magical again, and the sadness in Dear John! I never liked the re-recording of The Story of Us, I always thought her little "next chapter" ad lib was missing the annoyance. The original Better Than Revenge has the mattress lyric!!! And the original version of Haunted just evokes so much more emotion, I missed the pure despair of "I just knooow" in the bridge. If This Was A Movie is featured on the album it belongs on, and I missed the acoustic versions of Back To December and Haunted, which Taylor did not end up re-recording. I also much prefer Safe & Sound and Eyes Open's original versions, and while they're not featured on this album they were recorded at the same time so I'm including them here. This is just a perfect album, and it just couldn't be replicated.

Version I'm Sticking With: Original (Every. Single. Track.)

Fearless

Now this was the one I was most worried about. This album, as well as Debut, are the albums released before Taylor started ramping up on professional vocal lessons. I was already not the biggest fan of this album when it first released, and honestly, I wasn't planning on listen to the original version. In the end, the completionist in me won.

Here's a fun fact: I actually never knew about the platinum edition tracks until the Taylor's Version of this album released. Yep, I just thought we got a ton of vault tracks until I learned otherwise. Thus, I only listened to the first thirteen tracks and... wow. The improvements were so, so needed. I am not a fan of Taylor's untrained voice, and I've always found it very warbly. I much prefer the Taylor's Version on all tracks, even the ones I grew up with. The only one I can excuse is Today Was A Fairytale, as it was technically originally recorded during the Speak Now era.

Version I'm Sticking With: Taylor's Version

Reputation and Debut

Reputation is a weird album for me. Because I had been waiting for the Taylor's Version to be announced, I didn't stop listening to it until sometime after The Eras Tour concluded. So, returning to it wasn't as monumental or emotional as the others. It felt like dusting off an album I hadn't listened to in a few months and resuming like it was yesterday.

As for Debut... I haven't listened to it yet, and I still won't be. I stopped listening around the same time as I did Reputation, but with Taylor hinting that the re-recordings for these tracks are still on the way, I would rather wait and listen with fresh ears.

Conclusion

I'm going to start with saying I love and appreciate both the originals and the Taylor's Versions. However, becoming a Swiftie during the original Speak Now era means that the originals hold a lot of emotions, nostalgia, and sentimental value for me. As the Taylor's Versions were released, I took them at face value and made myself believe that newer recordings and mature vocals = the better version by default. But I have also since grown as a melomaniac, and my taste has expanded very much in the past two years alone. I no longer care about vocal quality, but the emotions behind the voice.

Now, in the case of (almost) all of the rerecords, I prefer the originals due to those factors (except for Fearless, as I didn't really listen to that album until the Taylor's Version was released). Hearing her mature vocals on Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department fit those albums, as that's where she was when she made them. The youthful vocals fit more on her youthful albums because that's where she was when she made those, am I making sense?

An example: Kate Bush recorded her song "Wuthering Heights" in 1977. Her voice is very high pitched and could almost be defined as squeaky. She later re-recorded it in 1986 with her matured vocals- to put it in perspective, this was a year after "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" and her album Hounds of Love were released. I love both versions of the song, but to me her original vocals fit the song better as it is a youthful and haunting song of longing and sadness.

That said, there are still a handful of songs where I prefer the re-recording, whether that's because I didn't care for it until the Taylor's Version was released, or I think it was equalized or improved upon in every single way. Though, after sitting with the originals for some time, I returned to the re-records and found that many of them felt flat and emotionless in comparison. But in the end, I think the re-recordings are great works and have now served their purpose. In retrospect, I feel like I forced myself to grow into liking them out of morality. In this journey, I've discovered why I felt so burnt-out and aversive towards Taylor's music recently: there was no diversity or growth. Without the originals, all of her music had been recorded in such a short time apart, with no vocal variety. I needed to hear these originals, to have a fresh(er) take on Taylor's music. Going back and listening to the originals of Speak Now, Red, and 1989 felt like coming home.