Taylor Swift’s re-release of Speak Now comes with six fresh songs that reaffirm her position as a musical storyteller
By Mahjabin Rahman
It’s 2010, and you are a kid or a teenager. You got to know from the radio or from any of your older cousins that Taylor Swift has released her new album Speak Now and you are excited about it.
It’s 2023. You are an adult now. Many things have changed, but you get your news, that Taylor Swift has once again has released her Speak Now album and you are super excited about it all over again.
On July 7, Taylor Swift re-released her 2010 self-written album as Speak Now (Taylor’s version). All the Swifties were feeling the nostalgia that came with this album. As if it was 2010 all over again.
After her second album Fearless when everyone was accusing her of lying about writing her own songs Taylor dropped Speak Now, an album that was solely written by her. We all know Taylor is a storyteller, who beautifully lets out her emotions through her songs. Back then, she was only 20 years old, and poured all the feelings of being this young person into all of the songs. Through her songs, she took us through a journey of being wonderstruck by someone, falling in love, being totally consumed by her feelings, being heartbroken, thinking about anger and revenge or how to do better than revenge, and dreaming about the roads not taken and the choices not made. All of these emotions were in her songs. Most importantly, she expressed it so beautifully like she was narrating a story.
The original Speak Now album had 16 songs in it but the Taylor’s version has 22 songs with all-new songs from the vault. All the previous songs have been re-recorded by Taylor with some new flourishes but the new songs that are from the vault are the main attraction for all the Swifties. Taylor added six new songs and all of them tell different stories with heavenly melodies.
“Electric Touch” featuring The Fall Out Boys, is a new song where she expresses that she wants something very eagerly but she very well knows that it can burn her down. She knows it can break her heart or it can bring life into her and she names this unsettled feeling as an electric touch which can kill or bring life into a lifeless body.
Then comes the song “When Emma Falls in Love” where it feels like Taylor is the third party and talking about someone else. It is a song about some girl named Emma who falls in love, comes home, tells her mother about it, jokes about it that it can go wrong and she doesn’t do anything about it because she thinks that it will go nowhere and that makes Taylor laugh. But she also knows that when Emma actually falls in love, she will change the world of that boy for the better.
A bit of adult attraction is expressed through the song “I Can See You” where she was watching a person for a long time maintaining a professional relationship but from time to time, she thought what it would have been if it wasn’t only professional.
“Castles Crumbling” ft Hayley Williams is a song that shows her fear of losing her legacy, failing her fans, and losing the trust of her fans. For musicians, their fans are their most prized possession. In this song Taylor imagined what if she lost the trust of her fans and her castle fell apart. It is like a failure fantasy song.
“Foolish One” is a heartbreak song where TS shows how her mind and heart are in conflict because her heart is thinking about love but her mind is telling her not to be foolish and not to think that she is exceptional in the eyes of her special person.
Finally, there’s “Timeless.” This song is written in a very poetic way that can bring tears to the listener. In this song Taylor narrated a love story, a mature love story which is decades old. It tells the story of a soldier and his wife and the hardships of being a wife of a soldier. In the past, soldiers would leave their families and go to join the war. That made her imagine about their love stories and when she wrote “I’m gonna love you when our hair is turning grey, we’ll have a cardboard box of photos of the life we’ve made and you’ll say, ‘oh my we really were timeless.’” With this she hoped that those couples had a happy life together. There are some speculations that this song might be inspired by Taylor’s maternal grandparent’s relationship as the official music video on YouTube features their photos in it.
Taylor is an artist with immense talent in songwriting and expressing her feelings through songs. She started off as a country singer but she grew up to be a world class artist. When you first hear her songs, it might appear that the words are simple but that is her magic. She can make simple words sound magical with her vocals and her mesmerizing melodies, which are so catchy they get stuck in your brain. As a Swiftie it is a joy to share all the stages of life together with her through her songs. Knowing that she also experiences and feels all the emotions that we do is what makes us feel closer to her.
