Taylor's Version is the label Taylor Swift puts on an album she has recorded again from scratch, so that she owns the master recording. Four of them exist: Fearless and Red in 2021, Speak Now and 1989 in 2023. Working through all four alongside the originals on my discography tube map is what showed me how completely the personnel change between a record and its re-recording.
What "Taylor's Version" Means
Swift's first six studio albums, from Taylor Swift through reputation, were released through Big Machine. When that catalogue of master recordings was sold on without her agreement, she no longer controlled how those specific recordings were used in sales, streaming or licensing.
Her response was to record the albums again. A new recording is a new master, and that master was hers. The re-recorded versions carry "(Taylor's Version)" in the title so listeners can tell which is which.
Each one also carries From the Vault tracks: songs written during the original album's era but never released at the time. That is what makes them worth drawing as separate columns rather than folding them into the originals.
The Four Taylor's Version Albums
- Fearless (Taylor's Version), released April 2021.
- Red (Taylor's Version), released November 2021, a thirty-track version including the ten-minute "All Too Well".
- Speak Now (Taylor's Version), released July 2023.
- 1989 (Taylor's Version), released October 2023.
In 2025 Swift acquired her original masters, which removed the reason the project existed. The four above are the re-recordings that were released, and they are the four on the map.
The Credits Change Completely, and That Is the Story
This is the part a track listing will never show you. Red in 2012 and Red (Taylor's Version) in 2021 share most of their songs, but they do not share a cast.
The 2012 Red column carries twenty-three credited musicians, a lot of them Nashville session players and Los Angeles string players: Dann Huff, Michael Rhodes, Jimmie Lee Sloas, a full orchestral section under David Campbell. The 2021 re-recording carries forty-seven, the largest single column anywhere on the sheet, and the names are mostly her touring band instead: Amos Heller on bass, Mike Meadows, Paul Sidoti, Caitlin Evanson, Liz Huett, with Jonathan Yudkin on strings.
Nathan Chapman produced and played on the first four albums and is all over those early columns. He does not appear on a single Taylor's Version column. The people who replayed those parts nine years later were the band she had been touring with, not the band she made the records with.
How to Tell a Taylor's Version From the Original
- The title. Re-recorded albums carry "(Taylor's Version)" in their official name, on streaming services and on physical releases alike.
- The release year. Every Taylor's Version came out in 2021 or later, years after the album it remakes.
- From the Vault tracks. Songs the original album did not have. Red (Taylor's Version) runs to thirty tracks against the original twenty.
- The vocal. Swift was singing the early records in her late teens and early twenties, and the difference in her voice is the thing most listeners notice first.
Where the Re-Recordings Sit in the Catalogue
The map runs to fifteen columns: eleven studio albums from the 2006 debut to The Tortured Poets Department in 2024, plus the four Taylor's Version re-recordings, each placed at its own release date rather than beside the album it remakes. That is why Red (Taylor's Version) sits between Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Midnights, nine years downstream of the record it revisits.
If you want the plain sequence instead, I have set out the Taylor Swift albums in order separately.
Live albums, EPs, compilations and soundtrack contributions are not on the map. It is studio releases only.
The Print
The Taylor Swift discography map is a Giclée print on 230gsm textured matte fine art paper, archival and acid-free. It comes in A2 (420 x 594mm) and A1 (594 x 841mm), from £42, unframed or in a black wood frame. The forty-seven names in the Red (Taylor's Version) column are the reason to go A1.
Everything else sits in the Music Wall Art Prints collection, and an art print gift card lets someone choose their own.