On March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, Taylor Swift began her five-month Eras Tour spreading across the United States. At each show, Swift plays a three-hour long setlist spanning forty-four of her songs including two “surprise songs”. So far, the Eras Tour has surpassed many fans’ and critics’ expectations, but on her first night playing in Nashville, her surprise songs came with another surprise: the announcement of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).

In 2019, Scooter Braun bought Swift’s masters for her first six albums, controlling the rights to her work. In response, Taylor Swift decided to re-record and release each of her lost albums to include not only the original songs for the record but also unreleased songs she had considered for the respective album. In the past two years, Swift has released two re-recorded albums: Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version). Red (Taylor’s Version) proved to be a colossal success reaching 72% more album units in its first week than the original release of Red. Swifts’s latest album, Midnights, released in October of 2022,  broke global Spotify records for most streams in a day, becoming the biggest album of her career. The album came with the release of three music videos, one of which, “Bejeweled”, is rumored to have included several “easter eggs” or hints to the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).

Speak Now (2010) is comprised of fourteen songs written by Taylor Swift alone. The album encompasses Swift’s confessions and messages she wished she would have conveyed at the time. The majority of the album was written in her late teen years of eighteen to twenty, and now revisiting the album at the age of thirty-three, she states the album as “my album…I consider this music to be…the best thing that has ever been mine.” Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will comprise twenty-two re-recorded songs and six of her previously unreleased songs. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will be released July 07, 2023, but until then, Taylor Swift will be performing seventeen shows for The Eras Tour.