Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has been sweeping the music industry for almost a decade. She’s broken numerous records, won a ton of Grammys, and has reinvented herself and her music more times than one could count. 

Even though she’s still fresh off the release of two albums created in the same year, (Folklore and Evermore) and her third album of the year Grammy win, Swift is still growing in popularity. That’s because she is totally re-recording almost half of her discography. 

The reasoning for this is simple- she is reclaiming the work that she owns. Swift doesn’t actually own any of her albums that came about before her 2019 record Lover. This was due to her contract with the label Big Red Machine which was purchased by Scooter Braun in 2019. This meant she didn’t own any master recordings of her songs and this company could do whatever they wanted with it. Plus, Swift was only receiving less than a quarter of the profit the music made. 

So in a huge boss move, Swift has decided to re-record all of the albums she previously didn’t own under her own label. This way, they all belong to her and her only. 

She released the new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) back in April of 2021. But November 12, Swift broke numerous records with the release of her second newest re-record, RED (Taylor’s Version).

With almost 30 songs and one being over the 10-minute mark, Swift broke the record for the most-streamed artist in a day on Spotify. She was also number one on the Apple Music album charts! Some fan-favorite songs were highly anticipated, like “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Getting Back Together.” But the most popular song of her new record was the utterly heartbreaking “All Too Well.” 

Actually, this song was originally five minutes long in the original 2011 version of RED. But in Swift’s re-record, she released the original 10-minute long version of “All Too Well”. This version was the song that made the top ten on charts across the world, and it was pretty unheard of for a 10-minute song to actually do this. To add to the growing popularity of the song, Swift wrote and directed a short film titled, All Too Well that was based on the song version. She released this the same day as her album. 

Starring actors Sadie Sink and Dylan O’ Brien, the short film captures Swifts’ story in a magnificent way. The film follows a presumably young adult girl, played by Sadie in a relationship with a man quite older than her who is portrayed by Dylan O’ Brien. Throughout the film, we see the young girls’ relationships break and fall apart as the obvious age gap in the relationship causes many problems. With levels of maturity being very different and the man gaslighting her in a very intense fight scene in the film, the relationship between the two characters was doomed from the start. Swifts’ lyrics of All Too Well play in the background of the short film; and the song basically describes every event going on in the film as there was little to no dialogue. In the end, we see the young girl grown up now played by Taylor Swift herself. It is assumed by fans that this song and film is based on Swift’s own experiences, as the film was much more personal as expected (and the fact that she actually portrayed the character in the end.) 

Senior Allison Onstott is a fan of Swift and expressed, “My favorite song from the album is “Everything Has Changed” (ft. Ed Sheeran) because he and Taylor are two of my favorite singers of all time, and they sound really good together. I think it is really cool that she is re-recording most of her albums because she will finally get to own her own work.”