This Friday is the 13th and 13 is Taylor Swift’s favourite number – which is just one of the reasons Taylor’s fans think that we’re just days away from a mega Taylor surprise drop: that she’ll release not one but TWO album re-records forSpeak Nowand1989.Billboard has a recap of all the theoriesand, in case you need a reminder, when it comes to Taylor Nation and their theorising, they do this because she encourages it. They find the easter eggs because she leaves the easter eggs for them to find. So this is not impossible. But how possible is it?
I mean I get why she’d be all about that day. With Taylor though, she always sets herself up for success – as she should. She works hard, she believes in her work, she does the most to make sure she can support her work with all the resources available to her. Taylor is strategic, more and more, especially over the last few years, she looks at the entire board before making her move. That’s why her fans think she pushed up the release ofRed (Taylor’s Version)last fall by a week because Adele’s long-waited album,30, was coming out on November 19.
There is another highly anticipated album due out this Friday –Kendrick Lamar’sMr Morale and The Big Steppers, his first album in five years and his first since winning the Pulitzer with his last album,DAMN..So Taylor wouldn’t have the spotlight on her own on Friday, if she really is intending to drop bothSpeak Nowand1989on that day.
Or maybe there’s a connection here. After all, there’s a song on1989that involves Kendrick; that, of course, is “Bad Blood”, widely considered to be the worst song on a great album but it was slightly elevated by Kendrick, and of course he appeared in the video, which was a pop culture spectacle at the time, premiering at the Billboard Music Awards. Conveniently this year’s edition of that show is happening this weekend.
But I am interested in how the re-recording of the song is handled on1989 (Taylor’s Version)and whether or not the more popular version, which is the remix with Kendrick, is put together or not…because the way it stands with the master recording of that track, it technically doesn’t belong to Taylor and the whole purpose of this exercise is to devalue those previous originals and make the Taylor’s Version of her songs the go-to from now on.
So are both artists dropping on the same day? And if so… was there any coordination behind the scenes?
