Procrastinators everywhere should look away, as Taylor Swift’s bottomless proliferation is bound to make anyone feel lazy. Since 2020, Swift has been mixing in new album releases with re-recorded album releases, the latter being an effort to reclaim ownership of her first six LPs after they were sold to Scooter Braun in 2019. All told, she has delivered the Grammy-winning Folklore and its folksy, fictional sister album Evermore in 2020, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021, the history-making Midnights last October, and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) this July. Each album hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, fueling her equally dominant ongoing The Eras Tour.
There are only two albums left for Swift to re-record: her self-titled debut from 2006 and 2017’s shape-shifting Reputation. Swifties theorize that Reputation (Taylor’s Version) is next on deck. The rebellious record celebrated its fifth anniversary last November, which might matter more than you’d think. In November 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported on Swift’s re-record strategy in the context of Universal Music Group’s semi-recently amended policies — predating Swift beginning to re-record — an excerpt of which can be read below:
“Prior to Universal’s change, the industry’s standard rerecording restriction said an artist can’t rerecord until five years after the delivery of their last recording under the agreement, or two years from the end of the recording contract’s term, whichever is later. Universal’s new proposals increase those periods to seven and five years, respectively, and tack on another ‘seven year post period’ to the end of the rerecording restriction during which the artist is barred from rerecording more than two songs.’”
More generally, commonly cited potential Easter eggs so far include debuting a snippet of “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” during the second season of Amazon Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty as well as teasing “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” for the Wilderness teaser trailer.
For whatever it’s worth, Ed Sheeran shared in August that he hadn’t yet re-recorded his “End Game” (also featuring Future) track on Swift’s Reputation album. But as we’ve seen with Swift and Travis Kelce, a lot can change in two months.
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.