Taylor Swift is taking back what’s hers. It started with rerecording Fearless and she’s showing no sign of slowing down.
Her latest rerelease is her 2012 smash hit album Red, the breakup album of a generation. Miss Swift could have just recorded the album start to finish and left it at that but no she created a whole new experience, thirty songs long and a short film new type of experience.
Any die-hard Swiftie knows the iconic original All Too Well, a song rumored to have been about her ex-boyfriend Jake Gynellhaal. Apparently the moment that everything fell apart in their relationship was when Gynellhaal missed her 21st birthday, obviously terrible for any young woman to experience but it provided inspiration for this heartbreaking masterpiece.
The original song clocked in at 5.28 minutes, nothing to sneeze at. It was full of emotion packed lyrics such as “And maybe we got lost in translation//Maybe I asked for too much//
But maybe this thing was a masterpiece ’til you tore it all up.” Ouch Taylor that hurts, but the new version is a pain filled 10 minutes long and has some new exceedingly clever lines.
Swift takes aim at Gynellhaal’s preformative feminism, “and you were tossing me the car keys, “fuck the patriarchy” keychain on the ground.” She also points out his habit of dating women much younger than him, “And I was never good at telling jokes, but the punch line goes, “I’ll get older but your lovers stay my age.” I mean she has the evidence, Gynellhaal’s current girlfriend is 25 while he is now 40 years old.
The new lyrics are amazing obviously but it’s real crowning glory is the short film that accompanies it, suitably named All Too Well as well. Written and directed by Taylor Swift herself and starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink, it tells the story of a couple and how they went from falling in love to falling out of it. The characters’ actions mirror Swift’s lyrics nearly word for word creating heart wrenching scenes so beautifully illustrated by the actors.
In true Taylor Swift style there are Easter eggs littered throughout the film. The scarf mentioned in the song takes a centre role, the cookies (Taylor is known for her love of baking, even making treats for fans on occasion) and a scene recreating a famous paparazzi photograph of Gynellhaal giving Swift a piggyback.
This song and film project has proved something to the media that fans have known all along, Taylor Swift is not just some girl who writes songs about her ex-boyfriends. She is a multi talented artist who is finding her power to take back what was truly hers all along.
Anna Martin
Image Credit: Taylor Swift