Letter to Taylor Swift about Reputation (Taylor's Version)

Dear Taylor Swift,

First of all, congratulations on buying back the rights to the master recordings of your first six albums. I know that’s the moment that you and all of your fans were waiting for. All the blood, sweat, and tears that went into re-recording your albums as well as the three hours of singing during each one of your 149 Eras Tour concerts finally paid off. I recognize how big of a deal this for you — in fact, big deal is an understatement — and I share your excitement at finally realizing your dream of the past 6 years.

I’m writing to you because you mentioned in your letter that there’s still the possibility of you releasing a Taylor’s Version of both Reputation and your debut album. And while I fully support the idea of having a Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version), I just can’t fully wrap my head around the thought of a Reputation remake. Before anyone who disagrees comes at me, let me preface by saying that I consider myself a dedicated fan of yours, and I listen to your songs almost daily on repeat. Reputation is also one of my favorite albums you’ve made, and I’m in no way suggesting that the songs on the album aren’t good. In fact, I’m saying quite the opposite.

Reputation, as an album, represented your comeback from the public’s negative perception of you: after a series of incidents involving Kanye West and Kim Kardashian in 2016, the internet branded you as a “snake” and you became the villain. People who you once thought were your friends turned their backs on you. You disappeared from the public eye; critics thought your career was over.

But after a year, you did the impossible: you returned stronger than ever. With the release of Reputation, you became the first artist to have 4 albums sell more than a million copies within one week. Reputation became the best selling album in 2017 in the U.S. Instead of letting your rivals defeat you, you embraced the image of the snake and reclaimed your narrative.

And so, Reputation symbolizes the hurdles you’ve managed to overcome in that transformative period of your life. Each angry verse, each vengeful chorus was sung with fresh, raw feeling.

And it can be hard to replicate that. Don’t get me wrong, you’re one of the most incredibly talented artists in the world. I have no doubt that if you do re-record Reputation, it will be good. But the truth is, nothing you recreate will ever be able capture that same emotionally charged urgency that you brought to Reputation unless you relive the experiences that inspired it, which you probably wouldn’t prefer to do. And I know that you mentioned in your letter that if you ever do re-record Reputation, it wouldn’t be from the same place as before. However, that’s exactly my point. Why go through the process of remaking something when it already is everything it can be? One of the reasons that Reputation is such a treasured album is because of its backstory. People appreciated how you defied the public’s expectations and reemerged as a unapologetic version of yourself.

Reputation also marked the start of a new era. From deleting all of your old social media posts to killing off the “old Taylor,” you’ve made Reputation into a beginning, not an end. Therefore, Reputation should be the first album that you don’t re-record — the first album where you’ve already reclaimed what should’ve been yours, just by making it for the first time. You don’t have to do it again for a second time. If you re-record Reputation, you’ll not only make it the end of the re-recorded albums, but you’ll also overshadow (whether intentional or not) the original Reputation album that deserved to be highlighted.

Let me make it clear that when I express that you shouldn’t make a Reputation TV, I don’t mean the Vault tracks. I’m still interested in hearing the Vault tracks, as they never even got a chance to see the light of day. It’s just the 15 already released Reputation songs that I don’t think should be remade.

Taylor, you’ve finally achieved your longstanding goal of owning all of your masters. That alone is worthy of a celebration — there’s no reason to remake an album that’s so symbolic in its context. Reputation is already a timeless masterpiece, representing the intense emotions behind old feuds and new beginnings, and proving the world wrong all while reinventing your image and taking control of your story. I hope you’ll choose to keep the album’s sacred reputation by deciding not to re-record it.

Sincerely,
Inquisitive Hummingbird

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Reflection on the EPA

Dear Reader, Today I wanted to talk about the Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA. First, a brief history. The EPA was born out of crisis. In the 1960s, America was waking up to the environmental damage wrought by decades of industrial growth. Rivers were catching fire (most infamously in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire due to years of unchecked industrial pollution), smog was choking cities, and pesticides like DDT (or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, a crystalline chemical compound) were decimating wildlife populations. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring , had sounded a nationwide alarm, linking pollution and chemical use to widespread ecological harm and public health issues. By the end of the decade, the public had had enough. In 1970, under President Richard Nixon, the EPA was established by executive reorganization. It officially opened its doors on December 2 of that year. The idea was to consolidate numerous federal programs under on...
Read more