Leading into the discharge of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” one of many hottest subjects of hypothesis amongst Taylor Swift followers and observers was whether or not she may change a particular line in “Better Than Revenge” that some felt had not dated effectively for the reason that unique recording got here out in 2010. The conjecture was on level: She certainly rewrote the lyric in query for the 2023 model.
For the final 13 years, a very quotable diss line stood as: “She’s higher recognized for the issues that she does on the mattress.” In “Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version),” the road has been rewritten to: “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.”
“Matches” is a much less good rhyme than “mattress” for its matching line, “She’s an actress” (which was thought on the time to be the real-life career of the girl Swift wrote the track about). But the substituted line is a greater match for her feminist credentials as an grownup, since she has typically spoken in subsequent years about how girls’s courting lives, together with her personal, shouldn’t be up for judgment.
The swap was no shock, though Swift had not tipped something a couple of change forward of the brand new “Speak Now” being formally unveiled Thursday evening at midnight ET. In the weeks main as much as the discharge, 1000’s of social media posts and even some lengthy think-pieces had been devoted as to whether or not she ought to re-write the road, which many now view as anti-feminist or “slut shaming.” While many argued that Swift at 33 ought to current a extra progressive view of ladies’s sexuality than she had when she wrote the track at 19 or 20, others argued that the lyric ought to be preserved the way in which it was written.
Confirmation of the rewritten lyric was extensively disseminated Thursday afternoon as just a few followers acquired their copies of “Speak Now” early and shared screenshots of the lyric sheet. Early response amongst Swifties on social media appeared break up down the center, with some fretting that they must disobey orders and pull out their previous Big Machine copies to benefit from the fan favourite as they remembered it.
Rolling Stone essayist Larisha Paul took that view, partly, when she wrote in May, “Changing the previous now, or utilizing it to make some grand feminist assertion, wouldn’t solely really feel dishonest, however it could additionally compromise her objective of draining all the worth from her unique recordings after they have been tossed round and bought with out her permission.” The author advocated for retaining the track as traditionally conceived, as “a vital level in Swift’s difficult journey by means of coming to an understanding of intersectional feminism.”
But for many Swifties, the concept that the lyrics could be up to date was a fait accompli. That didn’t cease a whole lot of them from creating memes about how devastated they have been in regards to the change — though, to be truthful, most of them gave the impression to be tongue-in-cheek statements about their attachment to nostalgia, not severe critiques of the swap. (Scroll right down to see a number of the funnier GIFs reflecting followers’ blended emotions.)
Swift wrote a prolonged “prologue” that’s included within the packaging of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” nevertheless it doesn’t handle “Better Than Revenge,” and the singer has not carried out any interviews to debate the brand new launch — the third in a sequence of six re-recordings of her Big Machine catalog.
It’s not the primary time Swift revised a lyric she wrote as a teen that bought known as into query later, though this one was longer in coming. The unique model of “Picture to Burn” on her 2006 self-titled debut album had the 16-year-old singing, “So go and inform your mates that I’m obsessive and loopy / That’s advantageous, I’ll inform mine you’re homosexual, by the way in which.” By the time a pop remix was despatched to radio, and a deluxe model of the album changed the unique, that couplet had been modified to: “…That’s advantageous, you received’t thoughts if I say, by the way in which.” Avoiding the looks of homophobia made that one way more of a no brainer, even when, even at present, a few of Swift’s LGBTQ followers say they thought the unique was advantageous.
When it involves “Better Than Revenge,” Swift and her tourmate Hayley Williams, of Paramore, have one thing in widespread. Williams introduced in 2018 that her band would cease performing its greatest hit, “Misery Business,” due to a line she additionally had written as a teen that had been known as “misogynistic”: “Once a whore, you’re nothing extra.” In 2022, although, she had a change of coronary heart and began performing it once more — though she has shunned singing the road in query herself, whilst the group picks it up.
There is a protracted historical past of performers altering disputed traces which are considered as insensitive — together with a latest one, when final 12 months each Beyonce and Lizzo reissued their summer time albums with a phrase edited out that refers to bodily disabilities however is casually used as slang. Black Eyed Peas launched after which recalled a track that had a distinct slang phrase for psychological disabilities within the title, with the revised tune happening to turn into a success. Elvis Costello introduced that he would cease performing “Oliver’s Army,” a track that included a politically ironic use of the N-word, slightly than proceed to sing a self-censored model, however at a live performance this 12 months he launched a recent model that included a wholly new verse.
One factor is for certain, as Swift continues to re-record her previous albums: In these “Taylor’s Versions,” the topic of being homosexual will first happen in her revised catalog in “1989’s” “Welcome to New York,” not “Picture to Burn.”
Here are some reactions from Swifties, as they humorously take care of the levels of grief in recognizing {that a} favourite former sing-along line has bitten the mud:
