Earlier than she launched Communicate Now, her third album, Taylor Swift was best-known for writing lyrical fairy tales equivalent to “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me,” by which she pined for romantic love and joyful endings. However “Higher Than Revenge,” from that 2010 file, was one thing completely different—an offended tune, stuffed with strains that seemed like they had been torn from the pages of a Imply Women–esque burn guide. Over crunchy electrical guitars and a pop-punk beat, Swift taunted the brand new girlfriend of an ex. She ripped aside her topic’s vogue sense, her profession selection, and, most controversial on the time, her intercourse life: “She’s higher recognized for the issues that she does on the mattress,” Swift snarled, within the tune’s huge sing-along refrain.
It was a nasty quantity, stuffed with the kind of inelegant insults one spews when actually harm, and it posed a dilemma for Swift’s ongoing venture to rerecord her work. If she scrapped the tune completely for its sexism, she would have failed to totally rerecord her third album. If she did what Paramore did with their hit “Distress Enterprise”—admit that the tune has troubling lyrics however maintain it as is—she’d probably obtain extra backlash than she did in 2010. Ultimately, the singer gave “Higher Than Revenge” a mini-makeover on Communicate Now (Taylor’s Model), the album launched final week. As a substitute of sneering at her goal’s expertise within the bed room, Swift delivers a misogyny-free metaphor about how her ex’s new relationship got here to be: “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches,” go the brand new lyrics. The sentiment is tamer, and the imagery extra poetic, persevering with Swift’s overuse of fiery language and willingness to edit her printed songwriting. (Swift has beforehand modified lyrics to “Image to Burn,” off of her debut album, and “Me!,” off of Lover—tracks that contained offensive, or within the latter’s case, plain dangerous writing.)
However the brand new “Higher Than Revenge” doesn’t solely soften the blow of Swift’s unique angle; sung in her richer, extra mature voice, the tune loses the pained, offended, and sanctimonious sound of her teenage self. As hostile because the lyrics could have been, their unfiltered high quality made the unique tune highly effective. In its adjustment, the observe reveals the curse of Swift’s rerecording endeavor as a complete: Strive as Swift would possibly, she will by no means seize the identical efficiency these albums had once they had been launched. In Communicate Now (Taylor’s Model), Swift struggles greater than she has on another “Taylor’s Model” variant to this point to shut the hole between her current and her previous. This time, she feels like she’s performing as—quite than partaking with—the individual she was once.
Up till now, the singer has efficiently time-traveled by constructing on her work, or adopting a brand new outlook in her vocal performances. On Fearless (Taylor’s Model), she sang as if she had been reminiscing about her youthful self, lending tracks equivalent to “Love Story” and “Fifteen” a welcome, figuring out heat along with her subtly altered inflections. On Pink (Taylor’s Model), she reworked “Woman at Dwelling,” a finger-wagging ditty about dishonest, right into a cheekier, lighter dance observe by overhauling its manufacturing, and she or he expanded “All Too Nicely” into a 10-minute showstopper.
Communicate Now, although, isn’t like the opposite albums Swift has rerecorded. It was written completely by Swift alone—on each different album, she’s used co-writers—and it comprises the artist at her pettiest, with every tune straight addressing “a selected individual in thoughts, telling them what I meant to inform them in individual,” as she explains in her liner notes. She tears a music critic aside on “Imply,” predicting that his future will discover him “washed up and ranting about the identical outdated bitter issues.” She fantasizes about crashing a marriage on “Communicate Now” to avoid wasting the groom from a bridezilla who has “a snotty little household all wearing pastel.” She seems to be again on the Kanye West incident with the totally smug “Harmless,” a ballad by which she reminds him to understand his “firefly-catching days.”
On the identical time, Communicate Now additionally wraps up with a hat trick of epic anthems: “Haunted,” “Final Kiss,” and “Lengthy Dwell” specific wildly completely different feelings, however they soar with sentimentality. All of this made for a brazen and unabashed portrait of a youngster on the cusp of maturity, assured in her maturity however nonetheless clearly removed from being grown. Because of this, the uncomfortable actuality of rerecording it greater than a decade later spotlight how time and perspective have inevitably whittled away the sharp edges of these turbulent years. On “Higher Than Revenge,” Swift can’t presumably re-create the chunk she as soon as had. In addition to, she’s additionally acknowledged how the tune got here from a really particular place: “I used to be 18 once I wrote that,” she instructed The Guardian in 2014. “That’s the age you might be whenever you suppose somebody can truly take your boyfriend. Then you definitely develop up and notice nobody can take somebody from you in the event that they don’t wish to depart.”
In that sense, then, the defanged lyric and mellower vocals in “Higher Than Revenge (Taylor’s Model)” do not less than replicate the awkwardness of partaking with a youthful self. In her incapacity to regenerate the poison of the unique observe, Swift conjures the disquiet that comes from revisiting the interval memorialized by the music of Communicate Now. It evokes that feeling of opening an outdated diary filled with entries written at a tough age and instantly eager to look away. Nonetheless, possibly Swift shouldn’t avert her gaze. After I listened to Communicate Now for the primary time as a youngster, I used to be shocked by the way it contained the form of scathing ideas I generally wished I may voice. I couldn’t imagine that Swift was in a position to convey, in the identical album, devastating despair at a failed romance (“Pricey John”), all-encompassing awe on the blossoming of a crush (“Enchanted”), and tender craving for the simplicity of her childhood (“By no means Develop Up”). And, sure, the “mattress” line in “Higher Than Revenge” made me gasp.
As I listened to Communicate Now (Taylor’s Model), I longed for that boldness. What if Swift didn’t rewrite one lyric within the refrain of “Higher Than Revenge” however wrote a brand new tune altogether? What if she modified the goal of “Imply,” now that she’s exceeded the expectations she’d outlined for herself in its lyrics? What if she expanded “Final Kiss” like she did “All Too Nicely”? “I do know now that one of many bravest issues an individual can do is create one thing with unblinking sincerity, to place all of it on the road,” Swift says in the liner notes for the brand new album, about her expertise writing Communicate Now. If solely she’d discovered the braveness to indulge the one who taught her that lesson within the first place.
