The Mastermind of Taylor Swift: Are We Getting Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) Next?

Any sane person knows it; Taylor Swift is a genius. She does most everything on purpose, constantly dropping hints at what’s to come next. Senior Sam Cook describes Swift as “the smartest person in the world” and a “genius”.  Recently, fans have speculated that her next drop will be the re-recording of her third studio album, Speak Now. 

If you’re not familiar with Swift’s re-recordings, she has been re-releasing her old albums to take back her masters. This is important because she believes that “artists should own their work for so many reasons”,  so she has been re-recording her work so that her fans can still listen to her music, but she gets the money from it. It comes from a place of taking back power, after being repeatedly bullied by Scooter Braun, who receives the income from streams of Taylor Swift, her debut 2006 album, all the way to her 2017 album, reputation. So far, she has re-released her 2008 album Fearless on April 9th of 2021, and her 2012 album Red on November 12th of 2021. 

One of the biggest hints for fans has been her new music video for ‘Bejeweled’. Fans have created theories based on different audio and visual aspects of the video. 

1. ‘Enchanted’ Violins 

At the beginning of the music video for ‘Bejeweled’, you can hear violins that sound like ‘Enchanted’, a song from Speak Now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7QlX3yR2xs

2. Elevator Buttons

In the ‘Bejeweled’ music video, you can see elevator buttons/floor labels that supposedly represent each album. Green is Taylor Swift, yellow is Fearless, Purple is Speak Now, Red for Red, Turquoise for 1989, black for reputation, pink for Lover, gray for folklore, and brown for evermore. But what fans noticed is that the next four labels are yellow, red, navy blue, and purple. This represents Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), and her newest album, Midnights. The last label is purple, which hints at Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) being her next release. Also notable, on the elevator buttons, the 13th floor is purple, which hints at the fact that if she re-records Speak Now next, it would make it her 13th album overall.

3. Balcony

Fans have noticed that in the scene from the ‘Bejeweled’ video, she is standing on a balcony, which is almost identical to the set of her Speak Now World Tour. I feel like this one speaks for itself.

4. Clock

The Clock she’s sitting on is pointed toward 3 o’clock. Supposedly referring to her third album, which she will re-record next.

5. Tour Announcement Tweet 

In her tour announcement tweet, Swift states (@taylorswift13 on Twitter) “I’m enchanted to announce my next tour: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour, a journey through the musical eras of my career (past & present!)”. ‘Enchanted’ is a single on Speak Now, leading fans to believe that it will be the next drop.

6. ‘I Bet You Think About Me’ music video

In the music video for ‘I Bet You Think About Me (feat. Chris Stapleton)’ — a vault track from Red (Taylor’s Version) — it shows Swift crashing a wedding, which may be a nod to the title track from her third album. The lyrics to ‘Speak Now’ open with “I am not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white veil occasion, but you are not the kind of boy who should be marrying the wrong girl”. The song is based around crashing a wedding, which is what the music video shows.

To back up what some people may see as delusions, I interviewed a few of my fellow swifties. When asked what they think the next re-record is, I got “Speak Now” across the board from freshmen Alice Bell and Bella Ondevilla and senior Sam Cook.