Taylor Swift notched her 11th career No. 1 album yesterday (October 30). According to Billboard‘s Luminate data source, Midnights moved 1.578 million first-week equivalent units — the most such units since Adele’s 25 in 2015 and more than enough to become one of the top 10 fastest-selling US albums of all time. Among Swift’s 11 No. 1 albums are 2021’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and last November’s Red (Taylor’s Version), and it seems she never expected for her re-recorded albums to be received so well.
While visiting The Graham Norton Show in London last week, the titular host asked Swift whether she agreed with the “rave reviews” posing that “the great songwriting” found on Midnights is partially due to re-recording her back catalog, which could be likened to “doing homework on songwriting.”
“I think so. I really do,” Swift said. “So, I’ve been re-recording my first six albums because there was a thing that happened where I had wanted to own my work of my first six albums when I changed record labels. My first six albums were actually sold away from me. And so, I decided to just — I just figured if I made them the first time, I can make them again.”
After rousing applause from the audience, Norton, and fellow guests Bono, Eddie Redmayne, and Alex Scott, Swift continued, “One of the things I was most thankful for was there’s a company of many stations in America called iHeart, and they have sworn to only play my new versions, and they’ve said that they’ll switch it out for the old versions every time I put out a new version of the song. It’s so heartwarming to me because this is something that I care about, but I don’t expect other people to care about it. It’s something that’s very personal to me. And it’s a lot of work, but it’s like, it’s really fun and rewarding for me. And I can’t believe people have actually gotten behind it the way they have.”
Swift was referencing the June 2019 sale of Big Machine Label Group to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, including Swift’s masters. Swift confirmed her plans to re-record later that summer. Come November 2020, reports surfaced that Braun sold Swift’s masters, which led to Swift publicly alleging “Scooter’s team wanted me to sign an ironclad NDA” before she would have been allowed to “bid on my own work.”
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) arrived in April 2021, and Red (Taylor’s Version) followed suit that November. Swift dropped her Easter-egg-riddled video for Midnights track “Bejeweled” last Tuesday (October 25), suggesting her 2010 album Speak Now is next in line for re-recording. The video was released on the 12-year anniversary of the third studio album.