Taylor Swift Announces ‘Fearless’ Re-Recording

It has been an exciting year for Taylor Swift fans. After the release of two secret albums in 2020, Swift announced on Thursday that her re-recording of her 2008 album Fearless will be released this spring.

Through a virtual appearance on Good Morning America and an Instagram post, Swift revealed that the album is ready. “I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon,” she wrote on Instagram. “It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault. Love Story (Taylor’s Version) will be out tonight.”

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The post included a photo of the new album and a statement about the re-recording. She began by her fans for the inside jokes and the “magic and curiosity” she got to tell through the album through the eyes of a teenager “who was learning tiny lessons with every new crack in the facade of the fairytale ending she’d been shown in the movies.”

Swift has been open in the past about her former label, Big Machine, selling the masters to her first six albums (Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation) to Scooter Braun. While Swift still owned the songs lyrically, she was only allowed to perform the songs with their approval. In November 2020, Swift was allowed to re-record her first five albums and will hopefully be able to re-record Reputation at a later date. Under her new label at Republic Records, Swift owns the masters to her three newest albums – Lover, Folklore and Evermore.

“I’ve spoken a lot about why I’m remaking my first six albums but the way I’ve chosen to do this will hopefully help illuminate where I’m coming from,” she shared. “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only now who really *knows* that body of work. For example, only I knew which songs I wrote that almost made the fearless album. Songs I absolutely adored but were held back for different reasons (don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too many down tempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical cd).”

“Those reasons seem unnecessary now. I”ve decided I want you to have the whole story, see the entire vivid picture and let you into the entire dreamscape that is my fearless album. That’s why I’ve chosen to include 6 never before released songs on my version of this album. Written when I was between the ages of 16 and 18, these were the ones it killed me to leave behind,” Swift continued.

Swift first teased the re-recordings in December when her friend, Ryan Reynolds, starred in a Match.com commercial using a brief snippet of the new recording of her 2008 hit “Love Story.”