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Explaining Taylor Swift and All Too Well


The first thing to know, which may not be apparent if you mostly know Taylor Swift from her radio hits or her media coverage, is that she’s not still heartbroken over Jake Gyllenhaal and hasn’t been devising elaborate revenge strategies for the last ten years. As devastating as the newly released 10 minute version of the song “All To Well” is, it’s a love letter to her fans.

That’s the explainer, but maybe we should back up a little.

Taylor Swift’s music stands alone, but it’s also (like her) a mirrorball: it looks entirely different depending on the light and perspective.

When she was 15, she signed a 13 year recording deal with Scott Borchetta as his very first artist of his brand new label Big Machine Records. She was in high school. Her first album was a resounding success. She felt like she and Scott were in it all together. She wrote about it in the song “Change” in 2008, in which she framed her successes as “we” and not “I”:

“we’re getting stronger now, find things they never found; they might be bigger but we’re faster and never scared… these things will change, can you feel it now? These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down… the time will come for us to finally win”

At the end of those years after she unquestionably made Scott and his label rich (apparently providing 80% of Big Machine’s revenue), she wanted to buy her masters and instead he sold them to Scooter Braun, her fairly public enemy. She said at the time:

“This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it. 

When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to.”

What a betrayal.

She wrote a song about that too, of course:

“15 years, 15 million tears
Begging ’til my knees bled
I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all
Then wondered why I left
… Now he sits on his throne in his palace of bones
Praying to his greed
He’s got my past frozen behind glass
But I’ve got me”

She decided to re-record her albums so that she could own her work. And to make it more fun for her and her fans, she decided to include extra songs on each album that didn’t make the original cut. The re-release of Red on November 12, 2021 is the second re-recorded album. It’s a pivotal album from her career as it was the bridge between her earlier three country albums and her subsequent pop albums. She decided it didn’t win a grammy because it wasn’t “sonically cohesive” but it was well-loved by her fans. It’s primarily an album of heartbreak.

“All Too Well” was never a single. But it became like Billy Joel’s “Scenes from An Italian Restaurant”, not released as a single but the song that fans scream out the loudest in concert.

Taylor has said that the song changed for her from being almost too sad to play to bringing her joy as the fans screamed it back at her every time she played it.

“Now, I play it and I think of the times I’ve played it in a stadium or an arena or my living room with you guys screaming the words back to me. And so it changed it, and I wanted to thank you for changing it, because it’s kind of nice to sing a song that you’re proud of, but not feel pain while you sing it. It’s very nice.”

The version on the original album is about 5 minutes long but there was a rumored 10 (maybe even 20!) minute version. Fans have been obsessed over this lost version for years. So she gave it to them. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone said of the song:

“The long-lost 10-minute original version of “All Too Well” turns out to be even better than we were all hoping. Taylor Swift takes her own masterpiece, tears it all up, breaks it like a promise, shreds her tapestry, and rebuilds it into a new heartbreak epic, twice as long and twice as mad.”

She turned the betrayal into a celebration.

Did you see the world turn red this week? The empire state building?


Starbucks?

The moon?

She seemed to manifest that (and Scott’s imagined reaction) on her surprise 2020 album Folklore:

“What do you sing on your drive home?
Do you see my face in the neighbor’s lawn?
Does she smile?
Or does she mouth, “Fuck you forever”?”

And:

“And I still talk to you (when I’m screaming at the sky)
And when you can’t sleep at night (you hear my stolen lullabies)”

So no. She’s not holding a grudge against Jake (although she may look back on how gross 30 year old Jake treated a 20 year old her). But she is reclaiming her past and turning the pain into a celebration.

And look, maybe you think she should leave her exes alone. Sure, that’s tired internalized misogyny (isn’t almost every song ever about love or heartbreak?) but consider that you also might feel that way because the girl can write a lyric. Every song ever about love or heartbreak is mostly interchangeable. Taylor songs are “you call me up again to break me like a promise” and “loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street“.

She gives you a glimpse of the specificity of how experiences have shaped her, going from “maybe I asked for too much” and “you push my love away like it’s some kind of loaded gun” on Red to “is it cool that I said all that? Is it too soon to do this yet” and “I love you ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard” on later albums about the early days with her current long-term partner.

And through it all (a Mirrorball):

“I’m still on that tightrope
I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me
I’m still a believer but I don’t know why
I’ve never been a natural
All I do is try, try, try
I’m still on that trapeze
I’m still trying everything
To keep you looking at me”

With this re-listening of Red, you can hear the lyrics “losing him was blue like I’d never known… but loving him was red” knowing how it ends: “I once believed love would be burning red but it’s golden, like daylight“.

But back to “All to Well”. Taylor doesn’t give all of herself to the radio singles. She keeps herself protected in track fives.

With the dusting off of the original 10 minute version though, she’s let everyone in on the celebration. Maybe you feel like you’re suddenly in the middle of a crowded party that you didn’t know you were invited to. Welcome. Enjoy the cake and the sad girl autumn.

For more than a five minute explainer though, check out Miss Americana, her documentary on Netflix, or her very sonically cohesive Folklore and Evermore, both recorded in quarantine and released as surprises.