Home » Re-Recordings » 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

1989 (Taylor's Version)

October 27, 2023

This article is about the re-recording. For the original album, see 1989 (2014).
1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the re-recording of Taylor’s fifth studio album, 1989 (2014). It was released by Republic Records on October 27, 2023, exactly nince years after the original record. The album was announced in Los Angeles on August 9, 2023, at the last show of the debut American leg of Taylor’s historic sixth concert tour, “The Eras Tour“.
Saying so long to the country darling we once knew, 1989 marked Taylor’s entry squarely into the pop arena. We heard inklings of this in RED two years prior, but this time, the shift in sound was unmistakable: Taylor was charting a path toward a kind of pop stardom where her music was going to become ubiquitous and permeable—heard in your bedroom, your mom’s car, or even on the dance floor.

In many ways, this album was meant to be a light-hearted pop forward soundtrack to Taylor’s life. “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” were devil-may-care responses to the media circus and Taylor’s romantic throes while “Welcome to New York” was a gleeful proclamation of young adulthood and finding one’s footing in a world that is electric and full of possibility. Even the most pointed of songs, “Bad Blood,” still feels coy and playful. But of course, you can never have fun without the pain. And that’s what 1989 (Taylor’s Version) reveals, exactly nine years after the original’s release.
Table of Contents

Background

1989 represented a departure from the country music of Taylor’s previous albums. When she first announced the album on August 18, 2014, she described it as her “first documented, official pop album”, stating that she was inspired by late 1980s pop during the recording period.

Taylor described 1989 as the most “sonically cohesive” studio album she ever made. In an interview with Kiss FM (UK), she confirmed that the title was inspired by the music developed in her birth year, 1989, which she had re-discovered during the making of this album. In September 2014, Taylor told Rolling Stone that Martin, New York City, her journal, Fine Young Cannibals and a sense of experimentation were the key influences underpinning the album. In relation to experimentation, Taylor elaborated on the music of the 1980s:

«It [the 1980s] was a very experimental time in pop music...People realized songs didn't have to be this standard drums-guitar-bass-whatever. We can make a song with synths and a drum pad. We can do group vocals the entire song. We can do so many different things. And I think what you saw happening with music was also happening in our culture, where people were just wearing whatever crazy colors they wanted to, because why not? There just seemed to be this energy about endless opportunities, endless possibilities, endless ways you could live your life. And so with this record, I thought, 'There are no rules to this. I don't need to use the same musicians I've used, or the same band, or the same producers, or the same formula. I can make whatever record I want.'»

The album was a critical and commercial success, receiving positive reviews from music critics and selling over 1.287 million copies within its first week in the United States. Taylor became the first artist to have three albums each sell one million copies within the first week, and 1989 topped the Billboard 200 chart for 11 non-consecutive weeks. Three of its singles — “Shake It Off“, “Blank Space“, and “Bad Blood” — reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. At the 58th Annual Grammy Awards (2016), 1989 won for “Album of the Year” and “Best Pop Vocal Album”, making Taylor the first female artist to win the former two times.

In November 2018, her contract with her forber record label, Big Machine Records, expired; she hence withdrew from Big Machine and signed a new recording deal with Republic Records, a division of Universal Music Group, which secured her the rights to own the masters of the new music she would release going forward. In 2019, American businessman Scooter Braun and his company Ithaca Holdings acquired the Big Machine Label Group. As part of the acquisition, ownership of the master recordings to Taylor’s first six studio albums, including 1989, transferred to Braun. Taylor immediately denounced Braun’s purchase of the label and announced that she would re-record her first six studio albums, to own the masters to her life’s work herself. In November 2020, Braun sold the masters to Shamrock Holdings, an American private equity firm owned by the Disney estate, under the conditions that Braun and Ithaca Holdings would continue to financially profit from the albums. Taylor began re-recording her first six studio albums in November 2020.

Announcement and Release

Taylor began teasing 1989 (Taylor’s Version) with “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)“, released on September 17, 2021, amid a viral TikTok trend involving the original 2014 recording of the song. “This Love (Taylor’s Version)” was released on digital platforms a couple of months later, on May 6, 2022. A snippet of “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” followed when it was featured in the 2022 animated film DC League of Super-Pets.

The music video for “I Can See You“, a vault track from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (2023) included an Easter egg hinting at the re-record of 1989. Finally, several hints to the imminent announcement were noticed by fans while Taylor performed at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles as part of her sixth concert tour, “The Eras Tour”, on August 9, 2023, including several of Taylor’s outfits changing to a blue color, and fans’ LED wristbands flashing blue five times. During the acoustic section of the show, Taylor officially announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version) as her next re-recorded album, set for release on October 27, 2023, nine years after the original release of 1989. She said:

«Since I was a teenager, I’ve wanted to own my music, and the way to do it was to re-record my albums and call them Taylor’s Version. And the way that you have embraced that, the way that you have celebrated that, you really decided that it was your fight too, and that you were 100% behind me, and if I cared about it, you cared about it. I’ll never stop thanking you for that. It is so generous of you to care about something that I cared about. And so now, here we are, on the last night of the US leg of 'The Eras Tour', in the eighth month of the year, on the ninth day of the month. You might have noticed there are some new outfits for this show, there’s some blue stuff going on. And there’s something that I’ve been planning for a really, really, really, really, ridiculously, embarrassingly long time. And I think instead of just like, telling you about it, I think I’ll just sort of show you something I decided to show you.»

In celebration of the occasion, SoFi Stadium illuminated its roof with the album title following the announcement.

It makes perfect sense that Taylor would finally release 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in the months following the first leg of “The Eras Tour:” It’s a re-recording of the 2014 album on which she reintroduced herself (at just 24) as the all-conquering, planet-like presence we know today. She’d already started adjusting the ratio of country to pop on 2010’s Speak Now and 2012’s RED, but on 1989, Taylor did away with the idea of ratios entirely—just launched them into the ocean, and went all the way. It was a kind of rebirth—made with producers Max Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedder, and future best freind Jack Antonoff—that’s become so beloved over time that it’s difficult to imagine where she’d be right now if she hadn’t pivoted toward pop superstardom like she did.
Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)
Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)

Title Significance

The idea to name the album 1989 came to Taylor in a dream she had on January 27, 2014, the night after RED had lost the award for “Album of the Year” at the Grammys. In an interview later that year, she explained:

«It was the night of the Grammys this year. […] I remember going home and playing a lot of the new music I had recorded for some of my backup singers and one of my best friends. We were all sitting in the kitchen and I was playing them all this music, and they were just saying, ‘You know, this is very eighties. It’s very clear to us that this is so eighties.’ We were just talking and talking about how it’s kind of a rebirth in a new genre, how that’s a big, bold step. Kind of starting a part of your career over. When they left that night, I just had this very clear moment of, ‘It’s gotta be called 1989.’»

Taylor named 1989 after her birth year, which corroborates the influence of 1980s synth-pop. She described the title as a symbolic rebirth of her image and artistry, severing ties with the country stylings of her previous albums.
1989 Album Cover by Taylor Swift (Big Machine, 2014)

1989

1989 October 27, 2014 This article is about the album. For the 2023 re-recording, see 1989 (Taylor’s Version).1989 is Taylor’s fifth studio

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Lyrical Themes

Although the album’s production was a dramatic change from that on Taylor’s previous country repertoire, her distinctive storytelling ability, nurtured by her country background, remained intact in her songwriting. The songs still primarily focus on her recurring themes of the emotions and reflections resulting from past romantic relationships. However, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) showcases the maturity in 24-year-old Taylor’s perspectives: the album was Taylor’s first not to villainize ex-lovers, but to instead express “wistful and nostalgic” viewpoints on broken romance. She explained her shift in attitude to NPR in 2015:

«In the past, I've written mostly about heartbreak or pain that was caused by someone else and felt by me. On this album, I'm writing about more complex relationships, where the blame is kind of split 50–50 ... even if you find the right situation relationship-wise, it's always going to be a daily struggle to make it work.»

Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)
Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)

From The Vault

Thematically, the re-recording’s vault tracks follow the same cat-and-mouse story Taylor explored throughout 1989. They are perhaps the most valuable released so far, for that extra peek into Taylor’s mind that they allow listeners — not just broadening their perspectives of the original album and the story it told, but in some cases, telling so much by the fact that they were originally omitted.

Production

Most re-recorded tracks were produced by Taylor and Christopher Rowe. The remaining were co-produced by their original producers — Jack Antonoff, Ryan Tedder, Noel Zancanella and Imogen Heap. Swedish producer Shellback, who produced multiple songs on the 2014 recording alongside Max Martin, produced “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)” with Taylor and Rowe, while Martin was not involved in the production of the re-recording. All of the vault tracks were written and produced by Taylor and Antonoff, except “Say Don’t Go“, which was co-written by American songwriter Diane Warren.
1989 Album Cover by Taylor Swift (Big Machine, 2014)

1989

1989 October 27, 2014 This article is about the album. For the 2023 re-recording, see 1989 (Taylor’s Version).1989 is Taylor’s fifth studio

Read More »

Differences Between the Original and Taylor's Version

Compared to the first three re-recordings where the biggest change was Taylor’s mature vocals replacing her younger self, nothing jarring has changed on 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Every song is still as all-encompassing and anthemic as the next and, if anything, Taylor’s vocals are more powerful and punchy than ever. “Clean” is somehow more cutting with Taylor’s current vocals, with the lyric “I punched a hole in the roof” sounding more smooth and less angry than the 1989 version. Songs like “Welcome To New York,” “Blank Space,” and the still infectious “New Romantics” more or less sound like exact replicas. Sonically, if you were to tell a casual listener that these songs were recorded in 2014, they’d likely believe you.

Critical Reception

1989 (Taylor’s Version) was met with widespread acclaim from critics. On review aggregator Metacritic, it received a weighted mean score of 90 out of 100, based on fourteen reviews, indicating “universal acclaim”.

NME‘s Hollie Geraghty, The Daily Telegraph‘s Neil McCormick, and Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of Financial Times hailed 1989 (Taylor’s Version) as Taylor’s best record; Geraghty argued that the album consists of “deliciously polished belters”, while McCormick called it an “impeccable” and indistinguishable remake with “deft and clever” new tracks. Hunter-Tilney said the album documents “young adulthood, the most exhilarating and error-strewn period of a person’s life, in the highly engineered setting of the perfect pop song.” Will Hodgkinson of The Times dubbed the album a “pop masterclass”. Ed Power of i described it as a “bright, brash, smart and catchy” LP, displaying the best of Taylor’s effervescent songwriting.

Kelsey Barnes, writing in The Line of Best Fit, described the album as “sleek pop passion” and observed there are no jarring changes in the re-recording, “if anything, Swift’s vocals are more powerful and punchy than ever.” The Guardian‘s Rachel Aroesti described Taylor’s vocal performance as “richer and more mature yet hardly distractingly so” and felt the pertinent vault tracks add more depth to a classic. Rolling Stone critics Angie Martoccio and Mark Sutherland commended Taylor’s richer voice and the vault tracks; Martoccio stated, 1989 was not critiqued seriously by many rockist “cultural gatekeepers” such as Pitchfork in 2014 but its Taylor’s Version “shines a lot brighter”, whereas Sutherland said 1989 could have been the “greatest pop album of 1989” and the Taylor’s Version “could well be the greatest pop album of 2023.” Clash‘s Alex Berry admired the “exquisite” vault tracks that continue the sonic landscape of 1989. American Songwriter‘s Alex Hopper called the album “surprisingly timeless”, saying it sounds as fresh as it did in 2014 depsite its retro elements.
Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)
Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)

Commercial Performance

Immediately upon release, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) became Taylor’s most successful re-recorded album and extended her record as the first and only artist to have seven of their albums become the best-selling records of their respective years. It posted the highest single-day streams globally for an album on Spotify in 2023 and the second-highest for an album ever, behind Taylor’s own Midnights (2022), accumulating 176 million streams worldwide. Taylor also broke her own record for the highest amount of Spotify streams for an artist in a day, gaining over 260 million streams across her entire discography. In its opening day, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) eclipsed Midnights on Amazon Music to become the platform’s most streamed album globally in a single day ever. In its debut week, it became Amazon Music’s most streamed album in a single week. Republic Records reported global opening-week sales crossing 3.5 million units.

In the US, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) sold 250,000 albums on its release day, and over one million albums by its fifth day, marking Taylor’s eleventh album to sell 500,000 copies in a single week and record-extending sixth to sell one million. The album also broke two records set by Midnights as it became the top-selling album of 2023 and garnered the largest vinyl sales week since tracking began in 1991, selling 580,000 LPs in six days. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 1.653 million album-equivalent units, including 1.359 million album sales (including 693,000 vinyl LPs and 554,000 CDs sold) and 375.49 million on-demand streams. It surpassed Midnights to become the largest album sales week of Taylor’s career and the sixth largest of all time, and accumulated the most single-week on-demand streams of any of her re-recordings. Outselling its 2014 counterpart in the first week by nearly 400,000 units, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) marked Taylor’s 13th chart-topping album, extending her record among female artists. All 21 tracks on the standard edition of the re-recording debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, with “Is It Over Now?“, “Now That We Don’t Talk“, and “Slut!” in the Top 3 and four others in the Top 10. Taylor extended her record for most simultaneous debuts atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 (5) and became the first artist in Billboard Global 200 history to occupy the entire top six with songs from the re-recording.

In the UK, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) earned the biggest opening week of any album in 2023 in three days of tracking, with 148,000 units. It debuted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart with 184,000 units, more than doubling the opening of its 2014 counterpart. It sold 62,000 vinyl LPs in its first week, becoming the fastest-selling vinyl album of 2023. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) also marked Taylor’s record-extending 11th career number-one album in the UK. On the UK Singles Chart, “Is It Over Now?”, “Now That We Don’t Talk” and “Slut!” charted at No. 1, 2, and 5, respectively.

In Australia, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) debuted atop the ARIA Albums Chart as Taylor’s 12th No. 1 album in the country, marking her career-best opening week, the largest week for any album since 2017, and the largest vinyl sales week in the country’s history. Eight songs from the album charted simultaneously in the Top 10 of the ARIA Singles Chart, completely occupying the Top 4 spots.

She Never Goes Out of Style

1989 (Taylor’s Version) might have been the most hotly anticipated of Taylor’s re-recordings, since the original remains to this day her best-selling album. It feels safe to say that it lived up to the lofty expectations surrounding it, if not only because it’s so satisfying to see Taylor return so confidently to the place where she first injected such a certain sense of confidence into her musical persona. After 1989, no longer was she only writing from the perspective of the downtrodden, heartbroken outsider, but also from the perspective of one who can have fun with love, and who can find the power in taking ownership of her narrative. There’s something about that which aligned so perfectly in this particular “Eras” era for Taylor, when she’d now perfected that art and had a runaway success with it. At her “The Eras Tour” concert in Buenos Aires (Argentina) on November 11, 2023, Taylor thanked her fans in the stadium and around the world for their support of her version of 1989, saying:

«You know, last week was a really, really important week. [...] I know that there are a lot of people watching [...] from all different parts of the world, which is absolutely an honor, and so anyone anywhere who is listening to this right now, thank you so much for supporting my version of 1989. You know, I really knew I needed to get it right. 1989 is such, such an important album in my life, so for you to have embraced it the way you did, like it had the biggest debut sales week of my entire career! I am so blown away! And you did something else that is absolutely beyond my comprehension, which is that a song I wrote for 1989 which didn’t make the album, you guys got that song to go No. 1 on the Hot 100!»

It’s a treat to revisit an album that means so much in the Swift-verse, and even more of a treat to know that now as (Taylor’s Version), this original moment where Taylor began to take ownership of herself as an artist can now wholly be her own — it comes out of the woods, so to speak, and full circle into her arms.
General Information
ArtistTaylor Swift
ReleasedOctober 27, 2023
Recorded2021-2023
StudiosAudu (Brooklyn)
Big Mercy (New York)
Conway Recording (Hollywood)
Electric Lady (New York City)
The Hideaway (London)
Hutchinson Sound (Brooklyn)
Kitty Committee (New York, London, Belfast)
Mandarin Oriental (Milan)
Pleasure Hill (Portland)
Prime Recording (Nashville)
Rough Costumer (Brooklyn)
Sharp Sonics (Los Angeles)
Studio 112 (Jonstorp)
GenreSynth Pop
Length77:49
LabelRepublic Records
Producers
Taylor Swift
Christopher Rowe
Jack Antonoff
Ryan Tedder
Noel Zancanella
Imogen Heap
Shellback
Patrik Berger
TAYLOR SWIFT CHRONOLOGY
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) [2023]1989 (Taylor’s Version) [2023]THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)
Prologue
Album Certification
"4x Platinum" certification by the Recording Industry Association of America. Signifying 4,000,000 units sold in the United States of America.
Album Announcement
Tracklist
Album Artwork
Highest Honor
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