Taylor Swift Announces Midnight Release Of Re-Recorded 'Love Story'

Taylor Swift is following through on her big do-over pledge: The singer-songwriter announced on Good Morning America today that she had completely remade and expanded her 2008 album Fearless and will release its first single, “Love Story,” tonight at midnight.

Fearless: Taylor’s Version is the first of six planned re-recordings of albums initially released on her former label Big Machine. Swift pledged to re-record the albums after Big Machine’s 2019 sale of master recordings to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings – a sale that infuriated the singer. At the time, Swift described Braun as a bully and that never in her “worst nightmares” did she imagine he would end up with her catalog. (Braun has since sold the catalog to Shamrock Holdings.)

Swift’s plan is to re-record all six albums to encourage her legion of fans to choose her new versions over the old ones.

On ABC’s morning show today, Swift announced the midnight release of “Love Story,” and said the upcoming release of the entire rerecorded Fearless album would include 26 songs – twice the number on the original album. She described the additional music, which includes six never before released songs, as music “from the vault,” explaining that the previously unreleased songs had almost been included on the original album.

On her social media accounts today, Swift further explained her reasons for the Fearless re-recording, writing, “I’ve spoken a lot about why I’m remaking my first six albums, but the way I’ve chosen to do this will hopefully illuminate where I’m coming from. Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work. For example, only I know which songs I wrote that almost made the ‘Fearless’ album. Songs I absolutely adored, but were held back for different reasons (don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too many down tempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical CD).

“Those reasons seem unnecessary now. I’ve decided I want you to have the whole story, see the entire vivid picture, and let you into the entire dreamscape that is my ‘Fearless’ album. That’s why I’ve chosen to include 6 never before released songs on my version of this album, written when I was between the ages of 16 and 18. These were the ones it killed me to leave behind.”

See the GMA segment and Swift’s Twitter post below.

MORE: @taylorswift13 says the new re-recorded version of her “Fearless” album has 26 songs on it because she is including “from the vault songs” that almost made the album but didn't. 💛💛#TaylorSwiftOnGMA https://t.co/EJUDL2Iqjk

— Good Morning America 💛💛 (@GMA) February 11, 2021

I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon. It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault. Love Story (Taylor’s Version) will be out tonight. Pre-order now at https://t.co/NqBDS6cGFl 💛💛 pic.twitter.com/Vjyy2gA72O

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) February 11, 2021