I don't know about you but I'm feeling 22...again!
Pop star Taylor Swift dropped "Red (Taylor's Version)" on Thursday night. This version of her original 2012 album features 30 tracks and one "Message from Taylor."
Swift appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" as the album dropped and explained she was excited to share the new songs from the vault.
"What I'm really excited about is the songs that no one's ever heard that were supposed to be on that album," she said. "And I have artists like Chris Stapleton, Phoebe Bridgers featured on them."
She said the song she is most excited for is the 10-minute version of "All Too Well." Swift said she wrote the original lengthy version off-the-cuff at a rehearsal when she was 21.
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"I showed up for rehearsals and I just was really upset and sad and everybody could tell — it was like really like not fun to be around me that day," she explained. "And so I started playing guitar and just kind of playing the same four chords over and over again.... The band joined in and I started ad libbing what I was going through... it went on and the song kept building and building and building in intensity."
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In the end, the song was 10-15 minutes, she said, and her sound engineer recorded the whole thing. The new album features a version of that, even though Swift joked it was "an absurd length" for a song.
"Who thinks they can put out a 10 minute song?" she laughed. "I mean, me."
"We want a 10 minute song," Fallon replied.
"And that's what you'll get," she quipped.
Friday evening, Swift will also release her new short film of the same name, "All Too Well." After an afternoon premiere in New York City, the film will be available to watch online at 7 p.m. ET.
She explained there are loads of Easter eggs in the film — a trend she started with her first album.
Swift said she first started dropping clues in the lyrics of her debut album and it "got out of control" from there.
"Then I couldn't stop and all I started thinking of was, 'How do I hint at things, like how far is too far in advance? Can I hint at something three years in advance? Can I even plan things out that far? I think I'm going to try to do it,'" she laughed. "I think that it is perfectly reasonable for people to be normal music fans and to have a normal relationship to music. But if you want to go down a rabbit hole with us, come along, the water's great."
After a well-documented and public spat with her former label, Big Machine, and executive Scooter Braun, Swift has been recording new versions of her earlier works so she can own the masters.
In November 2020, the singer said the process has been "both exciting and creatively fulfilling."
In April 2021, Swift re-released her 2008 album, "Fearless." Her new version included several un-released songs "from the vault."
Swift also released two sister albums in 2020, "Folklore" and "Evermore." The eighth and ninth albums were a departure from the upbeat pop we’ve come to expect in recent years from the singer-songwriter.
“There was something different with folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning,” she wrote in December. “I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales.”
Swift still has to re-record her debut album, "Taylor Swift," her 2010 album "Speak Now," her 2014 work "1989," and her 2017 album, "Reputation."
She is also slated to be the musical performer on "Saturday Night Live" this weekend.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
