Taylor Swift says re-recorded ‘Fearless’ album will be released in April

Taylor Swift announced Thursday that she will release a newly recorded version of “Fearless,” her second album, with old favorites and some songs that have never been released.

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“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me ever more determined to re-record all of my music,” Swift, 31, announced on Twitter.

Swift said the rollout of the music would begin at midnight Friday, with the release of a new version of “Love Story” — now called “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” — her first Billboard Top 10 single.

“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” will be released April 9 and feature 26 songs total -- her original album contained 13 songs, The New York Times reported. The prerecorded album will include hits like “You Belong With Me” and “Fifteen,” along with six unreleased tracks written when Swift was a teenager.

“‘Fearless’ was an album full of magic and curiosity, the bliss and devastation of youth,” Swift wrote on Twitter.

“I’ve spoken a lot about why I’m remaking my first six albums,” Swift continued. “But the way I’ve chosen to do this will hopefully help illuminate where I’m coming from. 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. For example, only I know which songs I wrote that almost made the Fearless album. Songs I absolutely adored, but were held back for different reasons (don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too many downtempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical CD).”

Swift has waged a public feud with her former label, Big Machine Label Group, which released her first six albums, NPR reported. She originally announced that she would be rerecording her first six albums in August 2019, Rolling Stone reported. That came after the $300 million acquisition of her original masters by Scooter Braun.

Braun took ownership of Swift’s original recordings after his company Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group, according to Rolling Stone. Swift has said that neither Braun, nor Scott Borchetta, the founder of Big Machine who signed Swift when she was a teen, have given her a fair chance to buy her masters.

Braun later sold the rights to Swift’s music to Shamrock Capital, an investment firm founded by Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney, for more than $300 million, the Times reported. Swift said she declined an offer to partner with Shamrock, citing Braun’s financial involvement in the venture, the newspaper reported.

“Fearless,” which was originally released in 2008, won four Grammy Awards, including album of the year, and sold more than 10 million copies in the United States, the Times reported.

By creating new master recordings of her older songs, Swift can entice her fans to stream and buy the new versions she owns, the Times reported. In December, she previewed the new “Love Story” in an ad for the dating service Match, the newspaper reported.

Cox Media Group