‘Speak Now’ is widely known as Taylor Swift’s “breakthrough” album and also the third album that she re-recorded, 13 years after its initial release, to get the rights to her old masters back. As her prior re-releases – ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ and ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ – Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ includes not just the old classics that we have been sobbing to in our bedrooms for over a decade now, but also songs from “The Vault”, meaning Swift wrote them for the original album in 2010, but they never made it onto the final tracklist.
All songs carry a feeling of nostalgia and lyrically enlighten listeners of what it’s like to grow up as a girl – from fantasising about the perfect future (‘Mean’), relationship (‘Mine’, ‘Ours’) and surprisingly happy endings (‘Speak Now’), to actually falling in love (‘Sparks Fly’, ‘I Can See You’) and situations that don’t quite end the way you always pictured them to in your head (‘Dear John’, ‘The Story Of Us’). Besides heartbreak (‘Last Kiss’) and furiously targeting the horrible man of Swift’s past or his new girlfriend (‘Better Than Revenge’), the album also deals with regret (‘Back To December’), the scary feeling of getting older (‘Never Growing Up’) and realising that instead of waiting for someone else to come around and complete you, you have always been whole (‘Foolish One’).
Swift proves, like countless times before, that she is not only a glamorous pop star that knows how to put on a show – her “The Eras Tour” concerts are three hours long, include songs from all albums, multiple outfit changes, and most of them sold out in under 10 minutes – she is also one of the best songwriters of our generation, and every song she sings will never fail to make you feel something.
Written by Vicky Madzak
GEM Magazine 