Of course, there are plenty of small differences if you listen closely enough, but most of them are minor enough to fade from attention after a few listens. But most of the songs end up in the solid, if unexciting, territory of being decent approximations of the original. The new “ wee-EE! ”s in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” also sound a little like a child going down a playground slide. A handful are actively disappointing: “Holy Ground” is one of Swift’s best and most underappreciated deep cuts, flushed and breathless and pulsing with color, but even though producer Jeff Bhasker returned to work on the rerecording, some crucial sense of energy is missing from his updated arrangement and the vocal production. The heart of this album is the (literal) reproduction of the tracks that made up the original Red, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. In short, Red is near impossible to pin down satisfactorily, and the newly rerecorded Taylor’s Version only makes it more complicated. The album tends to be remembered for a handful of its highlights, as well as the abstract nostalgia for its stylistic commitment to not committing to anything but the heat of the moment, but its less iconic songs do make the project feel less convincing as a whole than some of Swift’s more focused releases.
Caught in between country and pop, it’s a fan favorite project that has some of the best songs of her career but also a wildly inconsistent tracklist. Red is the Taylor Swift album most precariously balanced between different identities.
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