Speak Now (Taylor's Version)

About

Speak Now (Taylor's Version) is a rerecording of Taylor Swift's 2010 album Speak Now, produced by the artist herself and released on July 7th, 2023. Following its release, fans online rejoiced at the new recordings of old songs, illustrating their reactions and commenting on the themes of the famous album with memes and other discourse as it trended on several social media platforms.

Background

Taylor Swift began the project of rerecording her back catalog in 2021 after her record label sold the rights to her old songs to Scooter Braun's company in 2019. Swift considers Braun a personal enemy. In order to regain control of the songs, she decided to meticulously rerecord a "Taylor's Version" of each of the albums that Braun owned the rights to, beginning with Fearless in 2021. The rerecording project has been a critical and commercial success.^[1]

After the rereleases of Fearless and Red, Swift fans speculated about which album the singer would re-record next. A series of cryptic clues in social media posts and at concerts led some fans to believe in the spring of 2023 that Speak Now would be the next rerecorded album. Swift confirmed this speculation on May 5th, 2023, at a concert in Nashville, by displaying the information on a screen.^[2]

Speak Now (Taylor's Version) was officially released on July 7th, 2023, with Swift writing an introduction to the project in a post on her Tumblr (seen below), which received over 12,400 notes in less than 24 hours.^[3]

Online Presence

Fans and prominent Swift fandom accounts received the album with a deluge of enthusiastic memes shortly after its release in early July 2023. Some of the memes spoke about how people felt as if they'd grown up alongside Taylor Swift, such as the one (seen below, left) posted by Twitter user @nobodynoswift on July 7th, 2023, which earned over 14,000 likes in 12 hours.^[4] Other Swifie memes poked fun at the single-minded or fanatical devotion of the artist's fans, such as Twitter user @dailytaylortea (seen below, right) on July 7th, who received over 1,100 likes in a similar timeframe.^[5]

Others seized on changes between the original and the rerecorded version. In some cases, Swift altered entire lyrics, leading some fans to comment.

For example, on July 7th, Twitter user @blessedswiftie (seen below, left) received over 81,000 likes in a day on a Twitter post about it.^[6] However, in a poll included below that post, 80 percent of roughly 133,000 respondents said they preferred the original lyrics. Even more fans shared their favorite moments of the album as it continued garnering attention, such as Twitter user @swiftoursonggg who shared a meme (seen below, right) about the matter, earning over 15,000 likes in less than a day.^[7]

On TikTok, posters like @chris (Chris Olsen) shared their exaggerated responses to the release of the new music on July 7th, 2023. Olsen received over a million views in less than 12 hours for the TikTok (seen below, left).^[8] Others, like TikToker roisinofthenorth, shared their responses to developments like the lyric changes, earning over 150,000 views in a similar timeframe (seen below, right).^[9]

External References