The story starts when it was hot and it was summer — and Taylor Swift finally dropped Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
The superstar’s re-recording of her 2010 studio album arrived at midnight on Friday (July 7), includes all 16 songs from the original and deluxe versions of the project, plus seven never-before-heard “From the Vault” tracks with two collaborations with Hayley Williams and Fall Out Boy.
“Since Speak Now was all about my songwriting, I decided to go to the artists who I feel influenced me most powerfully as a lyricist at that time and ask them to sing on the album,” Swift wrote last month, when she revealed the track listing. Williams is guest on a vault track called “Castles Crumbling,” while Fall Out Boy appears on a vault track titled “Electric Touch.”
“They’re so cool and generous for agreeing to support my version of Speak Now,” she added of her collaborators. As Swift has previously explained in regards to Red (Taylor’s Version) and Fearless (Taylor’s Version), her 2021 re-recorded projects, vault songs are previously unreleased tracks that were ultimately cut from their respective original albums. As revealed in her post, the other (solo) vault songs on the updated Speak Now are “When Emma Falls In Love,” “I Can See You,” “Foolish One” and “Timeless.”
Swift first announced Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) during her first of three The Eras shows at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium in May, revealing the release date on the screen behind her.
“The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions and wild wistfulness,” she shared at the time. “I love this album because it tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing … and living to speak about it.”
Listen to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) in full below.
