Taylor Swift Announces Remake of 'Fearless,' Due in April

Taylor Swift has kept famously busy in pandemic times: On the heels of 2019’s Lover and a 2020 Netflix documentary, she’s released two albums in the past seven months alone, all while fighting a public battle for control of her past recordings. Now, she’s got another announcement: She’s releasing a rerecorded and expanded version of her 2008 album Fearless in April, titled Fearless (Taylor’s Version). At midnight Friday, she’ll drop its first single, “Love Story (Taylor’s Version).” It’s one of 26 songs slated for the Fearless remake, which will include re-recordings of not only the original album, but also Fearless‘ many outtakes and bonus tracks. Six have never been released in any form. In a Twitter post Thursday morning, Swift provided some context for the new recordings.

“I’ve spoken a lot about why I’m remaking my first six albums,” she wrote, “but the way I’ve chosen to do this will hopefully help illuminate where I’m coming from. Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work. For example, only I know which songs I wrote that almost made the Fearless album. Songs I absolutely adored, but were held back for different reasons (don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too many down tempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical CD).”

Swift has feuded publicly with her former label, Big Machine, which released her first six albums, including Fearless. The singer announced in 2019 that she’d record and release new versions of that music as a way of regaining control after Big Machine was sold to an umbrella company owned by Scooter Braun, an industry figure with whom Swift has had many public differences.

The original Fearless won Album of the Year at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Next month, she’ll learn if 2020’s folklore meets the same fate: That record earned her six Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year.