Taylor Swift’s re-recorded version of ‘Red’ is simply mesmerising
The lyrics about a man with a ‘million-dollar couch’ and ‘organic shoes’ who atends ‘cool indie music concerts’ seem to reference Swit’s ex, John Mayer
“I’ve always said that the world is a different place for the heartbroken,” Taylor Swit wrote in June, when announcing the re-recorded version of her 2012 album, “Red.” “It moves on a different axis, at a different speed. Time skips backwards and forwards fleetingly.” Listening to these songs again, almost a decade later, proves Swit’s point. Two chords and – ZIP-POW! – you’re transported back to the emotional landscape of 2012. For Swit, the rerecording process meant dialling back into the “fractured mosaic of feelings” she experienced at 20. “Red” was the album on which the former country singer threw herself into the shimmering arms of pop. The cocktail of her emotionally raw, crisply crated storytelling and formidable hooks was exhilarating. The album’s lead single, “We Are Never Geting Back Together”, was her first to be produced by Swedish pop wizard Max Martin and his partner Shellback.
Swit called time on any vestiges of herself as a hopeless romantic to the ballsy wallop of big drums. A million teenage girls high fived the Swit posters on their bedroom walls as she blew off the ex who “would hide away” and find his peace of mind “with some indie record that’s much cooler than mine…” Because how many of us have dated a version of that guy?
As with her re-recording of “Fearless,” Swit hasn’t tinkered much here. If the mate crimson lipstick she wore in the original artwork represented its sound, then imagine it now with an added touch of lipgloss and liner — perhaps that shade brighter, the jawline beneath it more determined.
“We Are Never Geting Back Together” has a more dynamic bass line pulse. “I Knew You Were Trouble” (a track on which Swit experimented with dubstep and voice distortion for the first time) gets chucked through a slightly gnarlier EDM blender. She’s explained in the past how this – rumoured to be about her fling with Harry Styles – was her first “shame on me” song, because she saw “every red flag going up” and fell for the guy anyway.
The silvery ratle of the military drum on “The Last Time”, her duet with Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody, is frostier in its finality.
The extras are a likeable ratle bag of nine tracks “from the vault”. There’s nothing to set the wider world on fire, but there are generous rewards for fans keen to stick it to Scooter Braun (with whom Swit has feuded over the rights to her back catalogue). They include a banjo-flecked version of the country sway-along “Beter Man”, which she wrote for Litle Big Town. There’s a lo-fi duet with Phoebe Bridgers called “Nothing New”, where their voices drop to cracked muters as they nag away at the insecurities that come with age: “How can a person know everything at 18 and nothing at 22?” Outlaw country singer Chris Stapleton joins Swit for the gutsy duet, “I Bet You Think About Me”. The lyrics about a man with a “million-dollar couch” and “organic shoes” who atends “cool indie music concerts” seem to reference Swit’s ex, John Mayer.