Taylor releasing songs from the Vault is a sort of religious journey I never knew I would take, but I am full on, all the way.
When you have been a dedicated Taylor Swift fan for as long as I have been, every newly released song is met with some small tinge of anxiety echoing “will this live up to everything else she has previously produced,” and the unbridled anticipation of, “I have to rearrange my evening so there is a chance I am still awake for the midnight release.” ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault)’ was no different.
Upon first listening to ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault),’ the comforting sounds of an acoustic guitar, bright chords, and a soft strumming pattern, brings a smile and nod to the familiarity of Taylor’s Fearless album first released in 2008. Suddenly I am 15 again driving to track practice with a too heavy book bag flying around the back seat, while actually driving to work, mentally calculating which pressing files will be handled first. When Taylor first sings “Once the last drop of rain,” we are met with the recognizable, unpretentious, and formative voice of the girl we have all known for years. Now I am sitting on pins and needles taking in every inflection of the lyrics, and processing every word to put together the story Taylor so often shared with us throughout her sophomore album.
A particular lyric in ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault)’ made me think about when Taylor took the “leap” from country to pop. Simultaneously I was at the height of my Taylor Swift impersonating career, and people would always ask me what I thought about her shift in genres. I always replied with the question “Was she ever really country?”
“The way the tires turn stones, on old county roads, they leave ‘em muddy underneath” is the first piece of evidence we hear from the Vault bridging the genres Taylor has so artfully mastered throughout her nine albums. Even though ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault)’ was written during the Fearless era, and released as a country album, the reference to muddy tires brings me straight to one of my favorite tracks off Evermore, ‘Tis the damn season.” “Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires,” Taylor writes in her second alternative album, curating the experience that Taylor was always going to musically explore her limits and genres.
After listening to ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault)’ a few more times, I turned the volume up and heard the rhythmic “dot, dot, dot, dot….” and immediately found connection to a song from the first surprise pandemic album, Folklore. ‘The Last Great American Dynasty’ begins with a similar rhythmic penning. And now I am captivated that by the first note, and the first sound, of her oldest-newest song, there are so many invisible strings tying these messages together.
But the connection doesn’t stop with Taylor’s most recent surprise albums. Throughout ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault)’ are the harmonicas of ‘Betty,’ and Taylor’s matured vocal inflection and lyrical command of her more recent years, as she delicately maneuvers the final chorus. There is also a nod to Taylor’s debut album. “But like the dollar in your pocket, it’s been spent and traded in” mirrors ‘Tied Together with a Smile’ and the unforgiving “cause you’re giving it away like it’s extra change, hoping it will end up in his pocket, but he leaves you out like a penny in the rain."
“So I lie, and I cry, and I watched a part of myself die” hits hard as we usher back in the sentiments of the Reputation era. “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now, why, cause she’s dead.” The irony of releasing these songs backwards is that of course Taylor never actually died between 1989 and Reputation. But a part of herself, and her reactions to circumstances, changes, just like she wrote during the Fearless era, and displays in ‘You All Over Me (From the Vault).’
Interestingly enough I have listened to ‘You all Over Me (From the Vault)’ hundreds of times since writing this, and I can’t find the story that was so common in ‘Fearless,’ ‘15,’ ‘White Horse,’ and ‘The Best Day’… songs complete with full narrative arcs, painting pictures of the first day, and all four years, of high school, and mom and daughter day trips, beginning as a toddler and continuing through adulthood. Maybe this is why ‘You all Over Me (From the Vault)’ didn’t make the cut of Taylor ‘s nineteen-song sophomore album Fearless Platinum Addition. Maybe ‘You All Over Me’ is a song with a thirteen year story just joining us now, and also taking us right back to the places we have always been, giving Taylor and her fans 13 years to write the story of their own.
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