Red (Taylor's Version)

This re-recording is a better, brighter version of a terrific pop album. Red is dead. Long live Red (Taylor's Version).

A collection of [new-to-us] songs that doesn’t have a real dud in the bunch.

Red (Taylor’s Version) has a happy, free, lonely, and, yes, confused vibe; quoting “22” feels appropriate in this case—it doesn’t get old, it just gets an incredible upgrade.

Truth is that this is now the definitive version of Red. It may also ensure that the good old boys who casually sold her music, seemingly out of a mixture of greed and spite, won’t get one red cent from Red, and it proves you can take a masterpiece and make it sound even better.

While the two versions of “All Too Well” are the most obvious examples of that skill, it’s the editing over the entirety of Red that elevates it from an album that seemed destined to be remembered as a transitional work in Swift’s catalog into a confident, refined album that demands inclusion in the pop canon.

Red – both in its original form as well as with these welcome additions – is an absolute triumph.

As ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ shows, this is an exercise in catharsis. Leafing back through the storybook of our own formative years, we feel it all.

Red (Taylor’s Version) is a highly rewarding listen for fans both casual and manic, bolstered by its excellent source material and Swift’s steady hand in rewriting her own looping history, with a few thrilling footnotes tacked on. ... Red 2.0 is another towering victory, which should be coveted by fans as Swift is surely already onto the next re-recording, furthering the worthwhile fight.

In anyone else’s hands, 30 tracks might feel bloated and indulgent, but Swift tempers length with careful curation, sequencing and a respect for what made the original Red such a superb pop record.

If you haven’t listened to Red, recently or ever, it’s well worth your time; in its ecstatic, expressive vocals, tart humor, vivid imagery, and tender attention to the nuances of love and loss, you’ll find everything that makes Taylor Swift great. ... Some of the vault tracks feel like they were left off of Red because they weren’t up to snuff.

Red has aged fairly well overall, even some of the lighter fare. ... The tracks from the vault here are stronger than those chosen for Fearless (Taylor’s Version).

Swift lays the groundwork of her songs with good chords in Red (Taylor’s Version), but she also enhances the songs’ power with catchy lyrics and melodies (“You fooound me / You fooound me / You fooound me-e-e-e-“).

It’s not an exercise of rethinking and tweaking old songs, but to take back ownership of her own music. The production here is a little sharper, with the instrumentation being brought further into focus.

Red (Taylor’s Version) adds satisfying hues of deep, gothic black.