It’s official: Taylor Swift‘s first re-recorded album is here.
At midnight on Friday, April 9, the superstar singer released Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the re-recorded version of her Grammy-winning 2008 album.
Fans will recall that the “Blank Space” artist decided to re-record her masters after a dispute with her former record label, Big Machine. Though she worked with its founder Scott Borchetta at the very beginning of her career, she chose to walk away from the label in 2019, prior to her seventh album Lover, so she could own her future recordings. The decision to re-record her first six albums came after it was announced that Justin Bieber‘s manager Scooter Braun, who Taylor accused of “bullying” her, had purchased Big Machine and with it, her masters. Scooter has since sold the master rights to her songs.
Now, however, Taylor is ready to move on with her own versions of her previous albums—and fans are really reaping the benefits. In addition to new version of beloved hits like “Love Story,” “Fifteen” and “White Horse,” Taylor has gifted Swifties with six unreleased songs “from the vault,” including tracks that feature Maren Morris and Keith Urban.
In a letter to fans about Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the 31 year old wrote, “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really *knows* that body of work. For example, only I know 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,” she continued. “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.”
Here are the new songs fans can enjoy right now.