Taylor Swift is revisiting her seminal 2014 album "1989," which served as the music superstar's significant breakthrough and first "official pop" album.
Swift, 33, announced her new album on Sept. 8 , skillfully incorporating the title (named after Swift's birth year). The announcement at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles came with the final date of her enormously popular Eras tour, which will return to North America in October 2024.
Over the weekend, fans learned that typing "Taylor Swift" into Google produced an animated blue vault widget with the message "It's waiting for you" –nearly the same line from the chorus of "Welcome to New York," the first song from "1989." The next step in the search encouraged users to "Help unlock the vault!" by taking part in a massive effort to jointly solve an astounding 33 million puzzles, which, according to the search, would reveal bonus tracks from Swift's re-recorded "1989."
Why is Taylor Swift re-recording her whole catalog?
Swift's rerecorded "1989" is the fourth in her catalog to be released as "Taylor's Version," an exercise Swift undertook in order to restore her artistic ownership following the sale of her original master recordings in 2020. Swift stated at the time that the sale "stripped me of my life's work."
Swift announced the new version of "Fearless" in February 2021 on social media, explaining her motivation for re-recording.
With popular singles including "Shake It Off," "Blank Space," and "Bad Blood" (with Kendrick Lamar), the album debuted in 2014 and topped the Billboard 200 albums list for 11 weeks. "1989" spent its entire first year in the Billboard Top 10, only the fifth album to do so.
On the awards front, "1989" received ten Grammy nominations (including three for the album's debut single, "Shake It Off") at the 57th Grammy Awards in 2015. The album "1989" won the most awards at the 58th Grammys. It won record of the year, best pop vocal album, and best music video for the song "Bad Blood."
"1989 (Taylor's Version)" will be released on October 27, the same date as the original album nine years ago.
