If Fearless (Taylor’s Version) demonstrated the potential for Taylor Swift’s singing to improve upon her early recordings in substantive ways, its follow-up proves that she’s willing to make riskier changes to her catalog that might elevate a good album to a truly great one. Throughout Red (Taylor’s Version), the singer-songwriter shows a surprising willingness to kill—or at least revise—her darlings, tweaking the arrangements and varying her phrasing in ways that are even smarter and more incisive than the originals.
The drums and power chords that kick off the album’s opening track, “State of Grace,” hit harder than they did on the original album, while the twee ukulele on “Stay Stay Stay” is now layered, giving it a more robust sound. These alterations give the songs a stronger emotional resonance that’s in service of narratives that find Swift always on the verge of something important, whether it’s a revelation that she may have ended a relationship too quickly (“Holy Ground”) or a bit of self-flagellation for her own impulsivity (“I Knew You Were Trouble”).
Nearly a decade after Red’s release, Swift’s instincts for pop have sharpened, and she makes purposeful refinements to these songs that play to her strengths. The mellowed arrangement on the title track, for one, highlights the song’s extraordinary melody while downplaying some of its still-awkward lyrics, and “Begin Again” leans harder into its country flourishes, heightening its plainspoken candor and hopefulness. It’s a testament to the growth in Swift’s musicality that she’s made every one of these 16 tracks sound new in a thoughtful way.
As was the case with Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the diligent work Swift has put into her singing makes a world of difference. In addition to the technical improvements of her voice on songs like “Sad, Beautiful, Tragic,” she’s become a far more evocative narrator. The bridge on “Treacherous” was already tremendous for its seemingly effortless modulation of both the tone and tempo of the song, but Swift notably shifts her emphasis on key words and phrases here. The way she enunciates “Nothing safe is worth the drive,” for example, is simply riveting. The insouciance on the original “22” made for an ill-fitting knockoff of what some other pop stars of the era were doing, but Swift replaces that indifferent tone with one that’s wistful.
The album’s centerpiece is, of course, “All Too Well,” a song about remembrance and regret that’s only deepened by an additional nine years of lived experience. Separating the song from the Taylor Swift Semiotics Exercise—truly, it never mattered whether or not a song this exceptional is about Jake Gyllenhaal—“All Too Well” remains a marvel of construction and tone. I described it as a “bloodletting” at the time, and the song packs an even bigger wallop now thanks to a broadening of its dynamic range and Swift’s more nuanced performance.
All the more surprising is the depth of the album’s bonus tracks. “Message in a Bottle” boasts a hook as catchy as that of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Shake It Off” without the self-conscious repetitions of those hits. “Nothing New,” a duet with Phoebe Bridgers, is perfectly of a piece with songs like “I Almost Do” and “Treacherous,” in addition to positioning itself at the midpoint between the slick pop of Red and Bridgers’s indie aesthetic.
The bonus material also foregrounds Swift’s ties to the country genre in ways that the original album minimized. Her version of “Better Man,” which Swift wrote for Little Big Town, bests that group’s chart-topping rendition; whereas the latter’s version sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well, Swift wisely goes for a more intimate, present approach. On “I Bet You Think About Me,” Swift’s vocal tone is complemented by Chris Stapleton’s soulful bluster. It’s among the best and most traditional country singles of Swift’s career, the kind of dressing-down of an ex that she does better than just about anyone: There’s a snide allusion to “your organic shoes” that’s maybe the most savage read she’s ever written.
That it’s another song that’s ostensibly about Gyllenhaal is, again, beside the point, and the album underscores that point by concluding with a 10-minute version of “All Too Well” that builds an even more complex vision of its doomed relationship. While there’s already the predictable sleuthing as to the identity of the actress who engages Swift’s narrator in a bathroom and a ridiculous article of when the phrase “fuck the patriarchy” might have first appeared on a keychain, the crux of the expanded world is a devastating verse about the narrator’s father, who attempts to provide her with comfort after she’s been stood up.
The new verses enrich the narrative, but it’s the shifts in the song’s structure that actually change the tone of “All Too Well.” With an extended coda on which Swift implores her ex to confess—“Just between us, do you remember it all too well?”—the extended version presents even more complicated motives. While the original “All Too Well” is about achieving as much of a catharsis as possible from a painful relationship, the longer cut more openly implicates the ex who’s responsible for causing that pain. The repeated invocation is not offering an attempt to reconnect or an opportunity for redemption. Rather, it’s about holding someone accountable, demanding that he confront his failings.
As narrative fiction and songwriting, it’s a masterpiece of construction and control. And having both the unabridged and the condensed versions of the song for direct comparisons testifies to Swift’s newfound capacity to revise herself. While the two versions of “All Too Well” are the most obvious examples of that skill, it’s the editing over the entirety of Red that elevates it from an album that seemed destined to be remembered as a transitional work in Swift’s catalog into a confident, refined album that demands inclusion in the pop canon.
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