“She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” (The release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) on July 7 revealed that Swift did in fact alter the original songwriting. “She’s not a saint, and she’s not what you think she’s an actress,” Swift sings on the record. But time has shown that she’s lived and she’s learned.Īs far as nasty words wielded by teenagers go, “Better Than Revenge” was … tame. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the third in Swift’s series of re-recorded albums out July 7, gives her a chance to right her wrongs with what she knows now - to take a “Fuck the Patriarchy” approach to clean up that compromising moment she immortalized as a teenager.
“Better Than Revenge,” the album’s most scathing deep cut (challenged only by “Dear John”), is largely overshadowed by its out-of-character slut-shaming but at the time, it hadn’t been a second thought. But as a teenager, she simply hadn’t lived enough to know. The introspective lyrics across the record often wondered about what could have been - if only she had seen the red flags for what they were, if only she had known more, if only the people she crossed paths with didn’t leave so much wreckage behind. Without a single co-writer on the album’s standard edition, released in 2010, Swift spent the years between 18 and 20 capturing her emotionally intense coming-of-age experience. To her credit, Swift was nice - but when Speak Now poured out of her, she had never been so angry. But in turn, as she was increasingly characterized as a “nice girl,” that same glittering grace was expected to be shown even in the face of public humiliation and other betrayals. The country-pop songs on which she carefully excavated past relationships with romantic writing were met with acclaim. Before she twisted stories of doomed relationships into metaphors about high-speed getaway cars or mapped out a decade-old breakup in a 10-minute short film, Taylor Swift walked a fragile line.
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