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Taylor Swift performing in Cincinnati on June 30

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Taylor Hill / TAS23 / Getty Images

There is probably no superstar who has ever started a similar project as the American singer Taylor Swift did two years ago. Because the music manager Scooter Brown, to whom Swift is deeply attached, acquired the master recordings of her first six albums at the time (and then resold them at some profit), she announced that she would re-record all these records. The owners of the masters earn from every stream and every airplay, and Swift wants to cut off the new owners from this stream of money. This is how the new recording project began. »Fearless« and »Red« came first, »Speak Now« is now the third old Taylor Swift album, which she brings to the market almost true to the original, but newly recorded. The new one is supposed to push the old album out of the market. What could work: In any case, her voice has changed surprisingly little since then.

She was 20 years old when »Speak Now« was originally released in 2010. At the time, Swift had just gone through the scandal that rapper Kanye West had dragged her into when he snatched the microphone from her on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards. It was the album with which the US singer gradually left her country imprint behind – and it was the album with which Swift began the now very long series of songs in which she sang after her ex-boyfriends: For example, the evil "Dear John", in which she asked John Mayer, who was almost twelve years her senior: "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with?"

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It's interesting that she has now changed the biggest diss line of the album. In the song »Better than Revenge«, which is about an actress who had unhooked her husband, Swift rhymed »actress« with »mattress« especially for her competitor at the time. The lines are gone. Instead, the actress now holds "matches" in her hands, on the fire of which the moth, i.e. her ex, burns herself. This, of course, is a worse rhyme. But perhaps thirteen years later, the flame of jealousy is no longer so high. And perhaps, in retrospect, Swift sees more clearly that it was not the woman who was the problem, but the man.

Swift has often described her songs as works of art that come from her everyday life, has packed diary excerpts into her booklets. It is interesting that at this point she has replaced the old anger with new serenity. But it fits in with the big experiment of the re-recording project: How do the old songs feel? Is that still me speaking? On the new cover you can see the current Taylor Swift in the same dress as on the old cover, in a similar, but completely different pose. Does my former self still suit me, she seems to ask.

Obviously, yes.

The real joke about »Speak Now (Taylor's Version)« is actually not so much the individual songs or the self-empowerment gesture of having made the album at all, but something more fundamental. Taylor Swift understands everything she has ever done as part of a great work. Many artists who have become famous at a young age are later ashamed of their early songs, but Swift is not. With a self-confidence that already shines through on »Speak Now«, she says: It's always been great. Because it's from her.