【译】叉婊Pitchfork评泰勒斯威夫特2021年单曲《Love Story (Taylor’s Version)》
翻译：Nomanlandever
In the summer of 2019, Taylor Swift took to Tumblr to announce that her former record label, Big Machine, had sold her masters to a company backed by music exec Scooter Braun. As a songwriter, Swift still held her publishing rights, but without influence over the masters, she’d lost a measure of control, like the ability to choose when her recordings could be used in film or advertising. But she wasn’t going down without a fight—she was going to re-record her entire diScography, and this time, she’d own the masters. The news sparked countless questions: Would she reimagine older songs, as she had in the past? Where would she start? How would she release the music? After making its debut in a dating app commercial starring Ryan Reynolds, the very first re-recorded song, Swift’s 2008 hit “Love Story,” is here.
2019年夏天，Taylor Swift在Tumblr平台上宣布，她的前唱片公司Big Machine将她的专辑卖给了一家由音乐总监Scooter Braun支持的公司。尽管作为词曲作者，Taylor仍拥有自己的出版权，但由于对母带没有影响力，她失去了一定程度的控制，比如不能选择她的音乐被公司用于电影或广告的时间。但她不会不战而败的——她要重新录制她前六张专辑。这一次，她将掌控自己的母带。此消息引发了无数的疑问：她会重新构思老歌吗，正如她以前有这样做过？她从哪首歌开始录？她将怎么发行重录的歌曲？在Ryan Reynold代言的约会软件广告中首播后，第一首重录的歌曲，重磅来袭，便是她2008年的热单《Love Story》。
This new recording largely remains faithful to the original, as if determined to make Braun’s masters obsolete. Aside from minor changes—the production is slightly more restrained, and Swift’s mature vocals are subtler, with no trace of country twang—it’s hard to tell the difference. This is the kind of endeavor that a detail-oriented person like Swift excels at: She employed the same fiddle player and backup singer from the original record, reunited the members of her touring band from the time, and doubled down on her lucky number 13 (it has been 13 years since the release of the original Fearless, while the new version’s announcement date and release date each add up to 13). If most mortal millennials tried to recreate our teenage creative endeavors, we would be sharing Twilight fan fiction or painfully awkward YouTube dance videos. It speaks to Taylor’s wunderkind status that she can revisit the work of her teen self without embarrassment.
这次重录版很大程度上忠于原录版，似乎决心让Scooter Braun手上的母带过时。除了一些细微的变化——制作更加克制，Taylor成熟的嗓音更加精湛，没有乡村音乐的痕迹——很难区分两者之间的区别。这正是像Taylor一样讲究细枝末节的人擅长做的：她使用的小提琴手，和声歌手都是原班人马，与她当时的巡演乐队成员重聚，坚守了她的幸运数字13（原版《Fearless》发行至今已有13年，新版本的官宣日期和发行日期加起来正好等于13）。如果大多数00后试图重新回顾我们十几岁时的青春创作，我们可能会分享《暮光之城》的同人小说或令人尴尬的YouTube舞蹈视频。这也证明了Taylor的神童地位，她可以不带尴尬地重新审视自己的青春作品。
Swift is also invested in reinvention, and her last few albums are almost antithetical to who she was on Fearless. She now sings about love with skepticism and remove; she drinks wine and alludes to sex; she delves into self-doubt and takes accountability for selfishness. But before that, she was a brash teenage girl unafraid of the intensity of her romantic desire, and though “Love Story” isn’t her best song, it illustrates her imaginative power (she wrote it, she’s said, before she had any “knowledge of what love was”). There is something wonderfully audacious about a teen girl rewriting the most famous Shakespearean tragedy as, well, a love story. Now, years later, “Love Story” becomes another type of performance: an adult woman’s display of ownership and agency.
Taylor也着经心打造了再创造方面，她之后发行的几张专辑几乎站在了《Fearless》里的Taylor的对立面。现在，她唱的爱掺杂着怀疑和疏远，喝着酒，隐晦地谈论性；她深陷自我怀疑中，为自己的私欲买单。但在这之前，她是一个不惧怕强烈浪漫欲望的鲁莽少女。尽管《Love Story》不是她最好的歌，但这首歌展现了她强大的想象力(她说，这首歌是她在“掌握爱是什么”之前写的)。一个十几岁的女孩把莎士比亚最著名的悲剧改编成一个爱情故事，这是非常大胆的。多年后的今天，《Love Story》变成了另一种表现形式:成年女性对所有权和代理权的展现。
