2025/05/27 by Samantha Ann Marley · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Music History and Culture #Poetry Analysis and Criticism #Media, Communication, and Education
paper · doi:10.1080/03007766.2025.2489337
openalex publication_date 2025/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
In 2019, Taylor Swift announced “Taylor’s Version,” a re-recording project for her first six studio albums. Scholars such as P.D. Magnus and Theodore Gracyk have positioned “Taylor’s Version” as a form of covering within pop music ontology. I argue, instead, that re-recordings are contingent on an artist’s genre positioning and harbor a unique relationship to their respective original recordings that is different from covers. By comparing “Taylor’s Version” to other instances of re-recordings in popular music, I suggest that re-recordings should take up their own ontological positioning as a narrowly defined phonographic practice adjacent to covers within a post-rock ideology.