1989 TV Album
By: Emma Cazes, Social Media Manager (2023)
Swifties are excited for the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) to finally be released to streaming services. After Taylor’s masters were sold to Scooter Braun in 2019, she decided that it was time to take ownership of her work and begin to re-record each individual album that she had lost. Within the past two years, fans have gotten three re-recorded albums including Red (Taylor’s Version), Fearless (Taylor’s Version), and this past summer, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
Image Courtesy of Twitter
Taylor announced the upcoming album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in a very niche way on August 9th, 2023. It was her final show of the first leg of the tour and she chose to wear all blue outfits. Throughout the show, she dropped her well known “easter eggs” which fans caught onto early. She wore a blue for the eras including Folklore, Speak Now, and of course 1989. During the acoustic set, Taylor finally let the world in on her well kept secret.
Image Courtesy of People
Fans went wild at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles as she told them, “Since I was a teenager, I have wanted to own my music and the way to do it was to re-record all my albums. The way you have embraced that, the way you have celebrated that, you really decided it was your fight too and that you were 100% behind me and if I cared about it, you cared about it. And I thank you for that.” She went on to tell the fans, “So now here we are, the last night of the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour in the eighth month of the year on the ninth day.” Everyone quickly figured out what she was hinting at, as the date was 8/9 representing the 89 in “1989”. The crowd erupted, as fans knew what she was about to do.
When the applause quieted, Swift went on to say, “You might have noticed there are different outfits in the show. There's something I’ve been planning for a really, really long time and I think instead of just telling you about it I’ll just show you.” She turned around and pointed to the big screen, and within seconds she had the whole world experiencing magic, madness, heaven, and sin.
Image Courtesy of Teen Vogue
Taylor later chose to announce the vault tracks in another unique way, making the fans earn knowledge they were longing for. Vault tracks are songs that were not originally in the album, but that she chose to add back for the re-recorded version.
Swift’s approach this time consisted of her partnering with Google, to create a new pop-up animation whenever you searched her name. She created a locked vault, with 89 puzzles each fan could solve. She had the world on a dash to finish, having to complete 33 million puzzles overall for the vault to unlock and release vault track titles. After the Ticketmaster fiasco, which left many fans without tickets to her tour, Google did not do much better. Their search engine shut down as well, leaving fans frustrated. However, it did not take long for “Swifties'' to come together and unlock the vault tracks. Fans have four new song titles that will be coming soon, including, “Is It Over Now?,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Say Don’t Go” and “Suburban Legends.”
The anticipation is growing as the release day, October 27th, comes closer by the minute. Swift has had many achievements in the past month, including her song “Cruel Summer” from the album, “Lover” hitting #1 on the Billboard Top 100 song charts as well as her successful movie adaptation of “The Eras Tour” which came out less than two weeks ago, on October 13th. Swift has a big reputation and there is no doubt this re-recording will be beyond our wildest dreams.