Taylor Swift - 1989

i am excite :D

Slut! (Taylor's Version)

Unless she's waiting to reveal them in coming weeks, no guest stars on the vault tracks this time?

Weird how she changed the "Blank Space" line to "Come on all you Dunkin' lovers"

I think the 1989 songs sound like sh*t, but the Vault tracks are really strong this time around.

wow, damn, this last one especially... 100% legit

This sounds noticeably worse than the previous rerecordings. Weird echo or something in the vocals that wasn’t there before, unless it’s the Spotify quality affecting it.

She removed the “Hey!’s from Blank Space

i listened to a bit of this and whenever i thought a detail sounded weird i went back and compared and it was always pretty much spot-on. i think these re-recordings just encourage listening with a weird focus on details that can catch you out if you haven't done that before

these vault tracks are better than at least a third of the album and really paint a picture of how this album could have been so much better. it's quite different from previous vault tracks which were re-arranged to the point of not really having the possibility of fitting with their parent albums

The indexing is fucked up – I Know Places starts in the middle of the song and includes the intro to Clean.

i'm two tracks in, the compression and weird gating on blank space is so fatiguing...

the fuck? there's loads of weird high frequency information on this... i'm listening lossless. your ear latches onto it and it really throws the low end off. the drums have lost all their pizzazz on shake it off...

It does seem noticeably different on the Max Martin songs, like they couldn’t duplicate the sound or we’re trying for what she does in concert

It seems like if it was easy to replicate whatever it is these big-name producers do in the studio, then everyone would be doing it.

I haven't looked, but just curious, who *is* credited as producer(s) on all these new versions?

I think Shellback is involved with most of them

I mean on some of the Max Martin songs. Christopher Rowe is the main producer.

Shellback’s on just one track, it looks like. It’s mostly this guy, this guy, Antonoff on a few tracks (including most the vault tracks), Imogen Heap on “Clean”…

(these are all co-producers with Swift)

Oh one of the vault tracks was co-written with Diane Warren, that’s interesting

Shellback produced Wildest Dreams but is listed as "Drums, Sound Effects" for Shake it Off

I hadn’t heard of Rowe but it looks like he’s primarily a country guy, wonder why she worked with him on these particular songs.

He's done production on all of the rerecorded albums. Must be able able to bang tracks out quickly.

lol she got Kendrick to re-do his Bad Blood verse on the deluxe version

the cover art for this one is much worse than the original, how boring. I don't think I'll bother giving this a listen

Yeah I really don't like the regular version cover, but some of the alternates had better photos imo.

oh I love the original cover, I think the polaroid is really cool.

ok i'm listening to some of this now and it sounds just like I remember the original sounding so whatever.

she never changes the things that I find irritating, like when she talk-sings lines like "cause, darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream". just sing that, don't talk it, it's not cute it's annoying.

i realize I'm in the minority there and that kind of cutesy shit is what lots of people love

she had a chance to change "nice dress" and let it stand

It is pretty hard to imagine people preferring to listen to these new versions except out of loyalty

"I don't have to pretend I like acid rock"

xp - sorry, i meant the "regular" version of the new Taylor's Version. some of the exclusive vinyl ones she sold had better covers.

Gawd, "Say Don't Go" (the Warren co-write) is so so good. All these Vault tracks are so good

let me remind you
THIS WAS WHAT YOU WANTED

[Chorus]
I didn't come here to make friends
We were born to be suburban legends
When you hold me, it holds me together
And you kiss me in a way that's gonna screw me up forever

whatever else she lost in the transition to pop music on this record, she still loved to employ the framework-shifting bridge. "out of the woods" and "all you had to do was stay" are both catapulted out of tedium by it

The "Bad Blood" version with Kendrick is her worst single, right? We can all agree?

(not that the original was good; it's like she constructed a nothing song out of a phrase she scribbled in her hotebook)

Not to sound like a jerk, but I feel like these vault tracks give the lie to the idea that Midnights was somehow "good" (I think it's a reasonable comparison, as they're in a comparable mode).

Just play "Slut!" adjacent to, say, "Maroon" (or yr favorite slice of tedium from that record)... it's (mid)night & day.

idk why i insist on putting myself through the rerecordings except that they usually summon fond memories of when i first heard the record. iirc the morning 1989 leaked i took it on the train with me and cried to "you are in love"

this is easily my least favorite taylor record other than the s/t so i'm not really dwelling on the uncanny differences in the rerecordings, other than "shake it off" sounding really bizarre

Not to sound like a jerk, but I feel like these vault tracks give the lie to the idea that Midnights was somehow "good" (I think it's a reasonable comparison, as they're in a comparable mode).

Just play "Slut!" adjacent to, say, "Maroon" (or yr favorite slice of tedium from that record)... it's (mid)night & day.

― Girl (1956) (morrisp), Friday, October 27, 2023 12:44 PM (one minute ago)bookmarkflaglink

i had the sameeeee exact thought lol. like oh wow they did really have a good idea here... 8 years ago

(not that the original was good; it's like she constructed a nothing song out of a phrase she scribbled in her hotebook)

― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 27, 2023 12:43 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's a dumb song, but it sounds good loud.

The "Bad Blood" version with Kendrick is her worst single, right? We can all agree?

― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 27, 2023 12:43 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"bad blood" vs. "me!" in a garish fight to the death

man antonoff's two songs on the original go so fucking hard

i actually think the new version of "i wish you would" sounds a bit better, more synthy and mechanical. feels to me like it has more steve winwood in it & less haim. but maybe i'm hearing things. i love this song

Listening now confirms:

All You Had to Do Was Stay >>>> Stay Stay Stay

"how you get the girl" underrated

What if you're new to Swift, should you go for the originals or the re-recordings?

Originals 100%

“slut!” is kinda drab but the rest of these vault tracks….. the long lost mini new wave taylor swift album implied by “new romantics”

i'm seeing and hearing less about this than I expected, perhaps we have finally reached peak swift saturation. she's almost done rerecording stuff now isn't she?