Taylor Swift’s announcement about her re-recorded Red was wrapped with a big hint that die-hard fans might finally get a gift they’ve been wanting for years: the original, 10-minute long opus of her heartbreaking album classic “All Too Well.”
“This will be the first time you hear all 30 songs that were meant to go on Red,” Swift wrote in Friday’s (June 18) reveal that Red (Taylor’s Version) will be released on Nov. 19. “And hey, one of them is even ten minutes long.”
It’s important to note that Swift has not officially confirmed the title of the 10-minute song that will appear on Red (Taylor’s Version). But on Twitter, she accessorized her casual mention of a 10-minute track with an emoji of a cozy red scarf.
Below, read on about that clue and others that point to “All Too Well” being the super long Red song that Swift is teasing.
The Legendary Old Scarf
The scarf emoji in Swift’s recent tweet just might be a very obvious wink at a certain scarf that has taken on a life of its own to Swifties — the one left in a drawer to be immortalized in “All Too Well.”
“But you keep my old scarf from that very first week ’cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me,” she sings. “You can’t get rid of it ’cause you remember it all too well.”
The 10-Minute Track Length
“All Too Well” is the first song Swift wrote for the breakup album Red, and clocking in at just about five-and-a-half minutes, it’s already the longest recording on the original 2012 album’s track list. In several interviews over the years, both Swift and co-writer Liz Rose have referred to even longer versions of the song that the public has never had the privilege of hearing — including one that’s just about 10 minutes long, with a number of verses that didn’t make the final cut.
“It was a day when I was just, like, a broken human, walking into rehearsal just feeling terrible about what was going on in my personal life,” Swift recalled of the origins of “All Too Well” on a podcast with Rolling Stone. “I ended up sort of just playing four chords over and over again, and the band started kicking in … People just started playing along with me. I think they could tell I was really going through it. I just started singing and riffing and sort of ad-libbing this song that basically was ‘All Too Well.’ It started with, ‘I walked through the door with you, the air was cold.’ It literally just was that song, but it had probably seven extra verses and it included the F-word.”
She continued, “Basically I remember my sound guy was like, ‘Hey, I burned a CD of that thing that you were doing in case you want it … I ended up taking it home and listening to it, and I was like, ‘I actually really like this, but it definitely is like 10 minutes long and I need to pare it down.’”
She then went to Rose, one of her longtime songwriting collaborators, to help her do just that. “She had this long song — story, basically — that she had put to music,” Rose recalled.
The F-Word’s Appearance
As Swift revealed, a 10-minute “All Too Well” with profanity exists. The original Red was, of course, never marked as explicit, since neither the F-word nor any other swear words made it onto the 2012 album.
However, upon the announcement of Red (Taylor’s Version), Swift detectives might have noticed that her official webstore lists both clean and explicit versions of the album to pre-order. Could the as-yet-untitled 10-minute track, presumed to be an angsty “All Too Well,” be the culprit?
“I thought it was too dark, too sad, too intense, too many things,” Swift, who seemed surprised that a non-single became such a fan-favorite over the years, has said of “All Too Well.”
Will fans only have to wait 22 more weeks to find out just how dark, sad and intense it was in its original form, when Red (Taylor’s Version) arrives?
