Back in 2010, Taylor Swift was in a state of transition: coming of age and leaving her teenage years behind, moving out of her parents’ house and crafting songs that touched on more mature topics. The result was Speak Now, an impressive, entirely self-written album full of heart-wrenching piano ballads, pop-punk-inflected songs, and towering anthems by an artist who was still considered a “country singer” at the time. Before Swift declared she was “happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time” on Red, Speak Now was brimming with "open letters” tackling the nuances of young love—how all-consuming, messy, and beautiful it all is.
And with its release that October, it gave Swift a voice—one that fought back against those who insisted an 18-year-old girl wasn’t writing her own songs. Though it’s been 13 years since Swift’s aptly titled third record was released, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which arrived on Friday, bears the same kind of emotional weight the original album once did. Swift is now in another period of transition, navigating a new level of celebrity thanks to six albums released in the last three years and the daunting, ongoing process of re-recording her first six LPs after the devastating loss of her masters. And just like that original 2010 release, Speak Now (TV) quite literally gives Swift her voice back.
But since Swift is now revisiting her work through a 33-year-old’s lens, not everything on Speak Now (TV) is the same. Much like her friend and tourmate Hayley Williams, who has since disavowed an anti-feminist lyric in Paramore’s breakout hit “Misery Business” (“Once a whore, you’re nothing more”), Swift has re-approached a cheeky but controversial lyric in her blistering pop-punk anthem “Better Than Revenge.” The line “She’s better known for the things that she does / On the mattress” has been generously tweaked to, “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches.” Internalized misogyny isn’t an easy thing to break as a young woman, but 13 years is a lot of time to do some soul-searching. It’s a clever update, but longtime fans will still likely have a soft spot for the original lyric, just as most of us do for our flawed, teenage selves.
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Swift’s “older and wiser” approach to revisiting Speak Now also extends to the new album’s sound. Instead of re-teaming with Nathan Chapman, who produced the original album, she recruited Christopher Rowe, who worked on both Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), with additional production from her recent go-to collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Gone is the presence of Swift’s teenage twang and breathiness—instead there’s a crispness that showcases her vocal strength throughout the record, turning songs like “Mine,” “Speak Now,” “Enchanted,” and “Long Live” into even more massive-sounding anthems. Her vocal maturity also adds a layer of self-assuredness and contentment to once pain-flanked ballads like “Dear John” and “Last Kiss.” What once sounded like defeat is now Swift stepping back into her power.
She also leans into the pop-punk ethos of “Better Than Revenge” and “The Story of Us” through Speak Now (TV)’s bonus tracks, including her collaboration with Fall Out Boy, whom Swift has cited as a huge influence on her songwriting. The band’s presence on “Electric Touch” turns a song about the palpable risk of romance into a blistering rock anthem. She channels that same energy on the Antonoff-produced “I Can See You,” which puts a darker spin on the breathy “oh, oh, oh” intro of “Mine” and details the excitement of a secret romance with a funky twist.
On the flip side, the Williams-assisted “Castles Crumbling,” a song about the pressures of fame and the fear of peaking, isn’t exactly one for the Swemos. Instead, it evokes the delicateness of “Safe & Sound” and surfaces as a sister song to Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) vault track “Nothing New.” “Once, I had an empire in a golden age / I was held up so high, I used to be great / They used to cheer when they saw my face,” she sings dolefully, seemingly referencing her legacy from “Long Live.”
The standouts of the Speak Now (TV) vault tracks, however, are Swift’s cinematic ballads. The Dessner-produced “When Emma Falls In Love” is primed to be an instant classic, channeling the wistful piano lilt of “Dorothea” on Evermore and the third-person storytelling of “Betty”: “She’s the kind of book that you can’t put down / Like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town / And all the bad boys would be good boys / If they only had a chance to love her.” The acoustic country-pop number “Foolish One” is a letter to her younger self that serves as a reminder to focus on acceptance rather than obsession: “Foolish one / Stop checkin’ your mailbox for confessions of love / That ain’t never gonna come / You will learn the hard way instead of just walkin’ out,” she muses. But it’s the album’s closer, “Timeless,” that’s the most breathtaking. With a lyric video featuring photographs of her grandparents (including Marjorie Finlay, who previously inspired the Evermore song “Marjorie”), the track, filled with ukulele and organ, pays homage to the history of their romance and how Swift yearns to replicate it.
Speak Now (TV) allows Swift to meet her younger self once again, teaching her hard-fought lessons and reliving the moments that made her. It embraces the nostalgia of a young woman’s voice and propels it forward, honoring the beauty of growth and the diary entries that it took to get there. Swift has her girlhood back, but it was never anyone else’s to begin with.
