November 12th is a big day for Swifties. Nine years after the original release date, Taylor Swift is re-releasing her fourth album, Red. This is her second album to have been re-recorded and released, preceding the 2008 album Fearless, which was re-released in April of this year. The two albums have gained lots of support from Swift fans, but many wonder why she is re-recording her albums in the first place. 

  Swift signing with Big Machine Records in 2005 marks the start of her recording career. Therefore, they own all the masters to all her albums, including the original recordings until the contract would end, but Swift still owns the copyrights. These include the beats, lyrics, and melodies of every song she writes. With this contract complete in 2018, Swift signed with Republic Records shortly after. Big Machine Records still owns her original master recordings to her first six albums, and they sold her masters to a company owned by Scooter Braun. Braun makes any money from all of the original six albums whenever they were played on the radio or streamed. 

  Taylor has a lot to say about this whole situation. This year, when announcing the Fearless re-recording, Swift says, “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.” Junior Piper Finch says, “I think it is so important that Taylor re-records her music because it is her music, and it has always been her music. She is the artist and should be able to own her own music.” Taylor wants to immerse fans in the entire experience, so they can get to know the album as well as her. Thus, adding the vault tracks allows Swift to show her fans a closer look into the album. Swift includes six new tracks on the Fearless album, with the title “(From the Vault)” added to them. Fearless has now spent 30 total weeks on the Billboard 200, a chart ranking the top 200 most popular albums in the country.

  Red (Taylor’s Version) is gaining large support from Swifties as well. Senior Avery Loeback says that Red (Taylor’s Version) is “absolutely legendary.” She remarks, “I was speechless” The Red re-recording includes nine “From the Vault” tracks, including a ten minute version of her popular song “All Too Well”. “All Too Well” is a fan favorite, and is presumably about Jake Gyllenhal, her boyfriend at the time. Along with the new album, Swift also releases a short film for “All Too Well”, featuring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien, who are supposed to represent Swift and Gyllenhal at the time of their relationship.

   The re-recordings of the original songs contain the same lyrics, but some of the songs differ in production as well as Swift’s voice.“The new vocals of the record show how Taylor has progressed as a singer as well as show her artistic vision now,” says junior Piper Finch. Red (Taylor’s Version) has taken the third spot for most streamed album in a day. Swift has swept the world by storm with Red, and easter eggs from Swift lead us to assume that Speak Now might be next.