Taylor Swift told her fans in Nashville first that “Speak Now” will be the next album in her “Taylor’s Version” run of re-recorded albums.
Swift is giving fans a lot of time to order the violet vinyl before it comes out. She said that it will be out on July 7 in all forms.
“I think rather than me speaking about it,” she said, causing fans to scream as they understood from her words that the long-awaited announcement was about to be made. “I thought I would show you, so if you would direct your attention,” she said. There, the album cover and release date was shown, and then Swift surprised everyone by playing “Sparks Fly” from her “Speak Now” record.
It fills me with such pride and joy to announce that my version of Speak Now will be out July 7 (just in time for July 9th, iykyk 😆) I first made Speak Now, completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20. The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their… pic.twitter.com/oa0Vs5kszr
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 6, 2023
When the news came out at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, purple lights were turned on on the nearby bridge over the Cumberland River.
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She posted on her social media accounts about 10 minutes after making the news.
“It fills me with such pride and joy to announce that my version of Speak Now will be out July 7 (just in time for July 9th, iykyk,” she wrote, using the word for “iykyk.” The July 9 reference comes from a line in the song “Last Kiss” that says that date. This is thought to be a day in 2008 when she went to Texas to see her then-boyfriend, Joe Jonas.
“I first made Speak Now, completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20. The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions and wild wistfulness. I love this album because it tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing… and living to speak about it. With six extra songs I’ve sprung loose from the vault, I absolutely cannot wait to celebrate Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) with you on July 7th.”
Before Friday’s Nashville show, fans had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. At the end of her last show last Sunday, fans were given purple wristbands, and electronic signs going into Nissan Stadium were also purple.
Fans have been wondering for a long time if “Speak Now” or “1989” would be the next album to get a re-recording and bonus songs. More and more evidence points to her third album.
With only a minute’s warning, the Taylor Nation account on Instagram went live and told fans what had been said. Swift is wearing a dress similar to the one she wore on the cover of the original record in 2010, but she is looking much more serious than she did when she was 20 and on the cover of the Big Machine edition.
Swift didn’t say anything else about the extra “Vault” tracks right away, other than that there would be six of them. A product page that went up soon after the news confirms that there will be a total of 22 songs on the release. The page also says that the LP version will come on “three unique violet marble color vinyl discs.”
So far on the Eras Tour, Swift has only played one song from the “Speak Now” album every night: “Enchanted.” This is far less than any other album she’s put out, except for her debut, which doesn’t get played every night.
Fans didn’t think she didn’t like the album because she didn’t play much from it during her three-hour-plus sets. Instead, it made them think she was waiting to add more material from “Speak Now” until she was ready to announce the re-recording.
Swift made her statement right after she moved to the B-stage for her solo acoustic “surprise songs” segment, which she does every night at the end of her tour. Swift used the time to play “Sparks Fly,” a song from “Speak Now” that hadn’t been played on the tour before.
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However, she didn’t use both of her surprise spots to play songs from the album. Friday’s second surprise song was from a different album. It was “Teardrops on My Guitar,” from her first record, but she played it on the piano instead of the guitar.
Swift has been re-recording all of her Big Machine songs, but so far only “Fearless” and “Red” have come out in “Taylor’s Version” forms. Fans have bought and streamed a lot of her new albums because they want to do what she wants, which is to only buy and stream the versions where she owns the recordings fully.
This is because she was upset that her Big Machine catalog was sold against her wishes. The “TV” versions also have a lot of bonus tracks of songs Swift wrote during those times but never put out.
When “Speak Now” came out 13 years ago, it was a big deal because it was the first and only album on which Swift wrote all the songs by herself. At the time, this was seen as a response to critics who thought that the young singer’s co-writers must have done most of the work on her first two albums.
After making her point, Swift went back to writing with other people on her next album, “Red.” People also remember that the record marked a clearer move away from her country roots and toward pop, even though it would be a few more albums before she officially called herself a pop artist.
At the same time, it was a step toward writing songs that were even more daring, like “Dear John,” which is still one of Swift’s most raw and powerful songs to date. Six songs from the album made the Billboard Hot 100: “Mine,” “Back to December,” “Mean,” “The Story of Us,” “Sparks Fly,” and “Ours,” which didn’t show up until a deluxe version with extra tracks came out.
Even though none of the songs on the album reached No. 1, “Speak Now” opened at the top of the Billboard 200 and sold more than a million copies in its first week. The Big Machine was No. 1 for a total of six weeks and has been given a six-times silver certification.
