Review: Red (Taylor’s Version)

There’s something special about an album that, upon listening, recalls an extraordinarily specific time and place. The first few seconds of the first track blare over your headphones, speakers, or whatever listening apparatus is handy, and suddenly you’re instantly transported from wherever you are right now to wherever you were when you initially heard that collection of songs.

For me, Taylor Swift’s Red will always remind me of the first semester of my freshman year of college, for a few reasons. For one, the original version of the record was released on October 22nd, 2012, smack dab in the middle of my opening semester at Villanova University. Additionally, the album itself is, perhaps more than any other Swift album, seasonally evocative: The album title is Red after all, the album cover looks like an Instagram filter, and there are lyrics about pumpkin spice lattes and falling leaves. It might not smell like Halloween, but the whole thing is about as autumnal as you can get.

More importantly, though, Red is of that time because it is so clearly an album of change. Swift was in the process of making a leap from emerging country star to global pop icon, and as a result Red is an intricate pattern and mish-mashing of genre. It jumps from arena rock (“State of Grace”) to country ballads (“I Almost Do”) to dub-step (“I Knew You Were Trouble”) to party pop (“22”). Swift was trying on every hat in the closet to see what fit best, only to find that most of them did pretty well. As you can imagine, exploring your potential and deciding which “you” is the best version of yourself is an alluring and familiar concept for someone in their late teens / early twenties, making it relatively easy to identify with the record’s subtext during the fall of 2012 even if I hadn’t endured a semi-public breakup with a “nameless” A-List movie star.

What made Red special upon its original release in 2012 is that very sense of personal growth, change, and experimentation, is all arranged in a 16 track “breakup album” package. It’s Swift’s best album not because it’s flawless, but because it revels in the mess; of a contentious relationship gone south, of an artist exploring their creative limits, of a person in their early twenties trying to figure out their life’s direction. 1989 or folklore might be closer to perfect records, but as a sage substitute teacher once said, “Rock ain’t about doing things perfect“. The ups, downs, and genre-induced whiplash…they make the record’s journey all the more compelling.

After sitting with it for a week, I’m happy to report that Red (Taylor’s Version), the second of Swift’s rerecords of her first six albums, manages to maintain the original’s spirit while also improving everything across the board. As with April’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the rerecorded tracks are surprisingly faithful to the fidelity of the originals. Although, where both the Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) had some slight changes, I found that Red TV‘s updates to be less subtle. Swift’s voice has changed over the last 9 years, becoming a deeper and more mature sounding instrument, but beyond that there are additional tweaks (like the guitar riff on “State of Grace”, the a more pronounced mandolin on “I Almost Do”, and a more in-your-face rendering of the synth undercurrent on “Holy Ground”), that generally work in the new versions’ favor. “Starlight”, a song I have often advocated should have been left on the cutting room floor, is a contender for most improved; it’s given a more analog treatment that lets the song breathe a bit and sound more organic.

The only cut that doesn’t benefit in any real way (and may actually be worse) is the lead single, “We Are Never Getting Back Together”, which almost sounds too crisp in this high-definition remaster, with the signature “weeEEE”s sounding out of place. It’s detriment to a song that has never (like ever) lent itself to excessive poring over by audiophiles when it’s meant to be sang at the top of one’s lungs on a road trip.

Of course, essentially adding a new and improved shade of red paint to tracks nearly a decade old is only half of the allure. The real catch is a series of previously unreleased “From The Vault” tracks that, when paired with the rerecorded bonus tracks from Red‘s initial iteration, actually make Red (Taylor’s Version) play like a sprawling 30 track double album. That speaks to the quality of many of these cuts, which include cameos from Ed Sheeran (on the very pretty “Run”), Chris Stapleton (on the Aaron Dessner produced “I Bet You Think About Me”), and Phoebe Bridgers (on the soul searching “Nothing New”, perhaps the best of the bunch). There’s also “Better Man” and “Babe”, two country mega-hits written by Swift and recorded initially by Little Big Town and Sugarland, both of which remain excellent here.

But the real draw here is the 10 minute version of “All Too Well”, the director’s cut of the already sprawling ballad that has become one of, if not the quintessential fan-favorite Swift tracks. I still tend to prefer the conciseness and structure of the standard six minute version, but the extended edition is still great in its own right. In a clever move, Swift didn’t merely record the song as the same, but longer. Instead, she and producer Jack Antonoff added a 1980s-style synth haze that makes the track sound like a memory. Antonoff’s production has a habit of overwhelming songs occasionally, but here it’s a light, nuanced touch that adds a lot to an already terrific piece. Swift’s additional lyrics are even more hyper-specific than the original album cut, which reduces the track’s universality but does mean we get gems like “you kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” and an anecdote about the aforementioned “nameless” A-List movie star ditching her on her 21st birthday. Those additional morsels alone mean I’m glad that this version exists.

The song (and the project as a whole) close with an almost dreamlike sequence where Swift’s voice fades out while repeating “I was there” around vignettes from earlier in the track: down the stairs, sacred prayer, wind in my hair, and more. It’s a stunning way to end the album, with Swift’s words haunting her former partner and the listener, like an echo of a recollection that won’t go away even as it fades to black. For a record that is so evocative of a specific season, time, and place, it’s only right that its last words swirl around like autumn leaves on a fall day, or a long-lost memory bubbling to the surface on a walk through the park.

MUST LISTEN TRACKS: Treacherous, I Almost Do, Begin Again, Better Man, Nothing New, All Too Well (10 Minute Version)

ALBUM RATING: 4 out of 4 stars