Is Taylor Swift Turning 2023 Back to 1989?

Staff Writer: Nathaneil Amakelew

Taylor Swift is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in pop culture this year. With a groundbreaking tour smashing records left and right, and 2 album announcements it is hard to ignore her name. Swift had one of the biggest album debuts of all time with her album “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” and her single “I Can See You” had Swifties searching for Easter eggs all over it. One of which being a bridge that said “1989 TV” which had everyone asking the question “Is 1989 Taylor’s Version the next re-recording.”

A Flashback to Where It All Started

To recap for non-Swifties, in 2019 Taylor Swift announced that she would be re-recording her first 6 albums that were sold away from her. Those being Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and reputation. So far, she is only yet to record her debut album and reputation, or as most fans are saying, she only has to claim her name and her reputation. That is because on August 9 (8/9), 2023 Swift announced that she would be releasing her version of 1989 coming on Friday, October 27, 2023.

Taylor Swift Never Goes Out of Style

As everyone knows, Taylor Swift is going on her biggest world tour ever, The Eras Tour. Back in March of 2023 Swift announced that her version of Speak Now would be released on July 7 of the same year. When she released it, social media went crazy over the 6 new vault tracks that were released alongside with the original 16 tracks. The most notably being “I Can See You”, which was the lead single for this album. Fans started to notice that she was starting to post “Polaroid-Like” posts on her social medias immediately and started to speculate about a potential “1989” re-recording announcement soon.

As many suspected Taylor Swift announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version) soon after the release of Speak (Taylor’s Version). On the night that she announced it was the final show of the first U.S leg of the tour and that night she had an entirely blue set list, meaning all her tour outfits for each distinct era were blue. This has significance to the whole story because over time Swift has branded her albums with respective colors, Lover being pink, folklore is grey, Speak Now is purple, etc. And for 1989 the whole color palette she chose for that era was blue.

Fan Theories and Expectations

Taylor Swift announced that there will be 5 Vault Tracks on her version of 1989 Leaving fans to wonder what these songs will be about. Many fans believe that there will be some sort of collaboration on the album with Taylor Swifts best friend to the music industry Selena Gomez. The basis behind this theory is that Gomez announced her comeback to the music industry recently. Gomez also said that she would have a single released on October 25 of 2023, Which many fans theorize that will be a collaboration with Taylor Swift due to Polaroid like images on the stars Instagram. Also, if we look at the dates of the two artist releases, they are only 2 days apart from each other which is a reasonable time, for artist of their level, to release a lead single for an album.

Other possible collaborations include Gracie Abrams, an artist who has recently risen in popularity over the past few years and has gone on tour with Taylor for the Eras Tour. But most notably Swift’s ex, Harry Styles. Styles and Swift Dated back in 2014 and was the muse for the 1989 album, but since then the two have formed a friendly relationship. Swift has been caught talking to Styles at events and such which led fans to suspect a collaboration. “What collaboration?” you may be asking, well if this were to come true it would absolutely break the internet. Fans theorize that a version of “Style”, a song rumored to be about Harry Styles, could potentially be featuring Styles soon. This theory has been backed up by trademarks that give Harry Styles rights over “Style (Taylor’s Version).” Katelynn Clark stated that she would “be so excited if Taylor and Harry had a song together because they are two of my favorite artists of all time.”

“I’m most excited for the re-recording of This Love, that song was the best song to come out of 2014,” Jazmyne Cheek emphasized. To conclude, Taylor Swift is breaking records and reaching people all over the world with her excellent lyrics and catchy hook lines. I think we can all agree that Taylor Swift simply never goes out of style.