It’s official: Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is on the way. Taylor Swift revealed during her first of three shows at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium on Friday night (May 5) that her 2010 third studio album will be her next re-recorded release, out July 7.
All of Swift’s fans got to enjoy the announcement too, because the Taylor Nation Instagram account went live from the concert for the onstage moment. She directed fans’ attention to the screens around the stadium, which read: “Speak Now. Taylor’s Version. Available July 7.”
Swifties already noticed that something was up last Sunday, when the light-up wristbands given to the Eras Tour attendees at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium turned purple at the end of the show. Purple is the color that represents Speak Now, which fans have long speculated would be the next re-recording. To celebrate the announcement, Nashville’s John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge also changed its lights to a bright violet hue on Friday night.
So far on the Eras Tour, which kicked off March 17 in Glendale, Ariz., Swift has only been performing one song from Speak Now, “Enchanted,” in her setlist — although “Mean” was performed as a surprise song during her April 15 show in Tampa, Fla. Speak Now spawned two top 10 singles in “Mine” (No. 3 peak on the Billboard Hot 100) and “Back to December” (No. 6), plus four other singles — “Mean” (No. 11), “Ours” (No. 13), “Sparks Fly” (No. 17) and “The Story of Us” (No. 41) — that charted on the Hot 100.
Upon its October 2010 release — following Swift’s mainstream breakthrough with 2008’s Fearless, which won the album of the year Grammy — Speak Now became the first Swift album to cross the 1 million sales mark in its debut week, launching at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 1.047 million copies sold. Swift’s third album has earned a total of 7.8 million equivalent album units in the U.S. through Apr. 27, according to Luminate.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will follow Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), both of which were released in 2021, as the third re-recorded studio album in her six-album endeavor. Swift announced plans to re-record her first six studio albums in 2019 after being unable to purchase the master recordings of her back catalog. Instead of releasing a re-recorded album last year, Swift issued her 10th studio album, Midnights, which scored the biggest debut week of her career and of any album in 2022.
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