Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s new note-fornote remake of the album that made her a superstar is, among other things, “an exercise in high-minded pettiness,” said
Allison Stewart in The Washington Post. Swift vowed almost two years ago, when the rights to her first six albums were sold to music executive Scooter Braun, that she would reclaim ownership of the material by re-recording every track. Fortunately, the release that inaugurates the effort is wonderful. Fearless, which Swift recorded when she was 18, remains one of the singer-songwriter’s best, and despite how precisely they mimic the 2008 originals, the 13 remade tracks are “almost uniformly better than their forebears: warmer, crisper, more clearly enunciated. They sound newer and, at the same time, more lived-in.” For fans, they provide both a reason to bask in nostalgia and a way to support their idol instead of a man she has labeled as a bully.
Comparing the remakes to the originals, “the most significant change is in Swift’s singing voice, a once brittle instrument that of course has gotten deeper, huskier, and more flexible,” said Mikael Wood in the Los Angeles Times. Unfortunately,
“she only takes advantage of that shift a couple of times,” on “Fifteen” and “The Best Day.” She has also added 14 bonus tracks, including six that are songs she wrote between 2005 and 2008 and has only now recorded for release. With the possible exception of “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” none hold up to the Fearless tunes that originally made the cut. “Lots of midtempo acoustic strumming here; lots of lyrics missing the trademark specificity that defines Swift’s A game.” But it’s fun to hear Swift in duets with Maren Morris and Keith Urban, suggesting what might have been had she never left Nashville and crossed from country into mainstream pop, said Bobby Olivier in Spin.com. And because “questions abound” about what comes next, it’s also fun to speculate. Will she really re-record all six early albums? Will the remakes start outselling the originals? “There really is no precedent for what Taylor Swift is doing.”