Taylor Swift let fans in her hometown of Nashville to be the first to get the official news: “Speak Now” will be the next album in her “Taylor’s Version” series of re-recorded albums.
Swift is giving fans plenty of time to pre-order the violet vinyl: She revealed that it’s coming out in all formats July 7.
Upon the announcement at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium, the city turned on purple lights on the nearby bridge over the Cumberland River.
About 10 minutes after making the announcement, she posted to her social accounts. “It fills me with such pride and joy to announce that my version of Speak Now will be out July 7 (just in time for July 9th, iykyk,” she wrote, using the acronym for “iykyk.” (The July 9 reference refers to a specific mention of that date in the lyrics of “Last Kiss” — believed to be a date in 2008 when she went to Texas to visit then-boyfriend Joe Jonas.)
“I first made Speak Now, completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20. The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions and wild wistfulness. I love this album because it tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing… and living to speak about it. With six extra songs I’ve sprung loose from the vault, I absolutely cannot wait to celebrate Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) with you on July 7th.”
Fans had a pretty strong indication of what was coming, entering Friday’s Nashville show. Wristbands given out to fans turned purple at the end of her previous concert this past Sunday, and electronic banners coming into Nissan Stadium were purple-hued.
Swifties had long speculated whether “Speak Now” or “1989” would be next to get the re-recording-plus-bonus-tracks treatment, with the evidence increasingly weighing in her third album’s favor.
The Taylor Nation account went live on Instagram to carry the spoken announcement for fans, with barely a minute’s advance notice.
The new cover art has modern-day Swift wearing a dress similar to the one she wore on the front of the original album in 2010, but with a more serious expression that marks her as definitely not the 20-year-old who posed for the Big Machine edition’s cover.
Swift did not immediately release titles or any other information about the bonus “Vault” tracks, other than to say there would be six. The total 22-song count for the release is confirmed on a product page that went up shortly after the announcement, where it’s revealed that the LP version will be a three-record set, released on “three unique violet marble color vinyl discs.”
So far on the Eras Tour, Swift has only been performing one song on a nightly basis from the “Speak Now” album, “Enchanted,” far less than any other album she’s put out except for her debut, which has no nightly representation. Rather than lead fans to suspect that she disfavors the album, that peculiar choice to make the album practically MIA in the three-hour-plus sets only heightened anticipation that she might be waiting to add more material from “Speak Now” until she was ready to announce the re-recording
