Swifties everywhere have been awaiting this day for quite some time, time, time. On Nov. 12, Taylor Swift released her second re-recorded album, Red (Taylor’s Version). The re-recording of Swift’s fourth studio album includes all of the original Red tracks, plus a 10-minute version of “All Too Well” and six additional unreleased tracks featuring artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Ed Sheeran, and Chris Stapleton. The release of Red (Taylor’s Version) was accompanied by an online release of the short film All Too Well, written and directed by Swift and starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink.
I can’t begin to express my gratitude to Sadie and Dylan for giving us everything they had in order to tell this story. All Too Well The Short Film is out on YouTube, and showing all week at the AMC 13 theater in NYC. For you, from us. ♥️https://t.co/YzOtPK5Hzd pic.twitter.com/gniDuc8KlF
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) November 13, 2021
At only 14 years old, the American singer-songwriter signed a 13-year contract with Big Machine Records as their first recording artist. The contract gave Big Machine ownership of the masters to Swift’s first six studio albums. After her contract with Big Machine ended, Swift announced her plan to re-record her first six albums to create new masters, giving her complete ownership of her music. The highly publicized controversy surrounding Swift’s masters sparked a discourse on intellectual property and musicians’ rights in the industry.
“It’s really inspiring for me and a lot of musicians. I think a lot of people make a couple of records [and are] like, ‘oh wow, I hit the top, I’m great now,'” said singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers in an interview with Billboard.
Red (Taylor’s Version) is the second re-recorded album Swift has released. On April 9, 2021, Swift released Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the re-recording of her second studio album. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) received critical acclaim and became the first ever re-recorded album to reach number one on the Billboard 200 chart and became the best-selling album released in 2021.
What has the conversation been like on social media? At the Social Media Listening Center, we used a search for keywords “Taylor Swift” and “Red,” “Red TV,” “Red (Taylor’s Version),” and “#ItsRedSeason.” The term “Taylor Swift” has been widely used and is not specific enough to be included in the search. While this search may not be fully extensive, it provides a glimpse into the online conversation.
On the day leading up to the album’s release, the search found more than 293,500+ tweets discussing this topic. By Nov. 12 at 11:59 pm, the search found 787,007 mentions across all platforms. The overall sentiment of the search was 61.9% positive and 38.1% negative. To get a better look at the conversation and the sentiment surrounding this topic, we paid close attention to the word cloud capturing the most common words and phrases associated with this search.
To gain even further understanding of the sentiment surrounding the news, we looked at the most commonly used hashtags related to this search. We found that #redtaylorsversion, #itsredseason, #taylorswift, and #alltoowelltenminuteversion are at the top. When searching the keywords “Taylor Swift” and “Red,” we found that some of the top themes of discussion the day the album was released were “Taylor’s Version,” “All Too Well,” and “Jake Gyllenhaal.”
“Jake Gyllenhaal” being a top theme of discussion is in reference to Swift’s wildly popular song “All Too Well,” which is rumored to be about Swift’s relationship with Gyllenhaal in 2010. At the time the two dated, Swift was 19 and Gyllenhaal was 32. Swift’s newly released lyrics about her age gap with Gyllenhaal has led to both criticism of the actor from Swift’s fanbase and some viral tweets.
Joe Jonas going to sleep tonight knowing all the attention is on Jake Gyllenhaal pic.twitter.com/f2T1LmBchH
— shane gray 🩶🤍🤎🖤 taylor swift liked my tiktok (@camprockqueen) November 11, 2021
Jake Gyllenhaal has stopped breathing #RedTaylorsVersion pic.twitter.com/HkNZXNLd7b
— Zoe 🤍 // June 22nd (@delicatestan1) November 12, 2021
Who is engaging in this conversation? Unsurprisingly, the majority of mentions surrounding this topic are from female Twitter users in the 18-35 age demographic located in the United States. The top influencers on Twitter are pop culture publications such as The Rolling Stone and Billboard. Plus, Swift herself has been an active voice in the conversation.
It never would have been possible to go back & remake my previous work, uncovering lost art & forgotten gems along the way if you hadn’t emboldened me. Red is about to be mine again, but it has always been ours. Now we begin again. Red (my version) is outhttps://t.co/ZUAWDuv4jL pic.twitter.com/Ji26KdOlWQ
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) November 12, 2021
The keyword search also revealed that Reddit users are engaging in r/Popheads and r/TaylorSwift. The megathread on r/Popheads discussing Red (Taylor’s Version) received 600+ upvotes and 1.5k+ comments. The comments contained statements of praise for the re-recording and the new, refined sound.
The volume trend of this conversation has slowly declined since the album was released. However, Swift announced a surprise music video yesterday via Instagram that will be released today at 10 am, so the online conversation is likely far from over. In the meantime, we’ll be streaming the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” on repeat from the Social Media Listening Center.
Author: Kendall Phillips
