After two years of battling for her own music rights, Taylor Swift has finally announced a re-recorded album.
Earlier this month, Swift announced on Instagram that she would be releasing a new version of her 2008 album, Fearless, and shared the album’s cover.
“I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon,” Swift captioned the post. “It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault.”
Her hit single from the original album, “Love Story,” was also rereleased earlier this month, as excitement rumbles about the new songs coming to the album. These additions are songs written by Swift between the ages of 16 and 18 that hurt her to have to leave behind.
In her post, Swift shares a coded message revealing the album’s release date, April 9. The message is shown through the capitalized letters throughout the message to her fans. The release date, 4/9, also adds up to the number 13 and Swift’s lucky number.
Fans quickly noticed that the new album cover features Swift in a loose-fitting, long sleeve shirt. This is similar to the one worn by actor Justin Gaston in Swift’s original music video for “Love Story.” The new album cover also features Swift’s long and curled hair, which is nostalgic to Swift’s hair in the original album’s cover.
The album’s rerelease follows talent manager Scooter Braun’s acquisition of Big Machine Records, Swift's former record label. The acquisition included the rights to Swift’s first six albums: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation. Swift wrote about her struggle with Scooter Braun’s purchase of her work on her Tumblr.
She wrote, “now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
This acquisition prevented Swift from performing a medley of her songs for the 2019 American Music Awards because it was considered a rerecording of her music. Braun and his team also refused to allow Swift to use her music in her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana.
In a Twitter post, she wrote, “they’ll allow me to use my music only if I do these things: If I agree to not re-record copycat versions of my songs next year (which is something I’m both legally allowed to do and looking forward to) ... This is wrong.”
After the long battle, Swift is now allowed to rerecord her past music and release never-before-seen tracks as well. While fans are ecstatic about the rerelease and Swift’s victory over Scooter Braun, she plans to rerecord more albums and seems more determined than ever to do so.
“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all of my music,” Swift shared on Instagram. “I hope you’ll like this outing as much as I liked traveling back in time to recreate it.”
