The prologue to 1989 (Taylor’s Version) explains exactly the kind of scrutiny that the original 1989 album was made under. “I had become the target of slut shaming—the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today,” Taylor Swift writes. “The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.”
In 2014, that meant surrounding herself with girl friends, espousing some feminism-101 level rhetoric, and writing songs that poked and prodded at her maneater reputation. “Blank Space” is the quintessential example of that, a flirty, satirical earworm that dominated the airwaves and holds up to this day. But it wasn’t the only song she wrote about her pre-reputation reputation: 1989 (Taylor’s Version) dusted off a few tracks “From the Vault,” including “Slut!”, which seems to be thematically similar—at least on the surface.
If there’s one thing Swifties like to do, it’s speculate, so when the title of “Slut!” emerged from the Google-backed vault there was a lot of chatter about what it might be. Unsurprisingly, many (including this writer) assumed it would be a “Blank Space”-esque pop banger, a railing against the pervasive media narrative, an entry-level feminist manifesto in the style of Lover’s “The Man.” As a title alone, it feels like it could fit comfortably on Olivia Rodrigo’s album Guts, right next to “all-american bitch.” The word punctuated by an exclamation point suggests pointed fingers, evokes anger and energy, conjures images of pop-punk princesses of times past snarling righteously into the mic.
Except if there’s one thing Taylor Swift likes to do, it’s subvert expectations, and famously, you can never judge a book by its cover. “Slut!” isn’t a rousing, righteous credo, it’s a slinky, downtempo ballad. It’s less of a metacommentary on her reputation at the time than it is a genuine love song (or at least a yearning one). The track does contain a bit of the defiance of “Blank Space” in the surprising way she flips the narrative in the chorus: “And if they call me a slut, you know it might be worth it for once.” Overall, though, “Slut!” is less about confronting the media narrative than passively accepting it as the price for being with the guy everyone wants.
This sort of naïveté (which Swift fully owns up to in the re-recording’s prologue) is present on all of 1989 (Taylor’s Version)’s “From the Vault” tracks. “Being this young is an art,” she sings on “Slut!”, and that comes across in the youthful folly of these new, old lyrics. “I call my mom, she said that it was for the best,” goes “Now That We Don’t Talk,” and the schoolgirl daydream of “Suburban Legends” is punctuated by the delightfully juvenile “When you hold me, it holds me together/And you kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever.”
There is a persistent problem across Swift’s re-recordings
What’s curious about the Vault tracks is the dichotomy of early-20s Taylor Swift lyrics meeting early-30s Taylor Swift production and vocals. That’s true to some extent about all the Taylor’s Version Vaults, but it’s particularly evident here where most of the songs sound—musically at least—like they could be pulled right from the Midnights sessions. The pauses in the chorus of “Say Don’t Go” recall a similar delivery on Midnights bonus track “You’re Losing Me,” and “Suburban Legends” sounds like a “Mastermind” dupe.
It’s not entirely surprising, as Midnights always felt like a sister album to 1989, and in a more literal sense Swift and her go-to producer Jack Antonoff probably recorded these songs around the same time. It’s just a little bit disappointing, though, because the mellow maturity she brings to the 1989 Vault doesn’t match the exuberant, bombastic energy of the original album, the energy of 1989 that’s present in the lyrics.
That’s a persistent problem across the re-recordings; of course, it’s impossible for Swift to capture the urgency and immediacy of her youthful emotion singing it ten or more years later. That’s the difference between creating something new and essentially doing karaoke. Who knew that would apply to songs we’ve never heard before, either. “Slut!” might be a surprise, but it lacks an edge that 2014 Swift might have been able to provide. “And if I’m gonna be drunk, I might as well be drunk in love,” the 33-year-old pop star sings, and you can almost hear the shrug. The art of youth has been lost here—it feels time to move on, hopefully to brand-new Taylor Swift songs that feel perfectly of their moment.