Taylor Swift has rerecorded her third album, Speak Now, but she’s made one big change.
Some fans got their hands on a copy of the album the day before it’s official release, and discovered that the singer has rewritten a line in the song Better Than Revenge.
The original lyric has been criticised over the years for being misogynistic and it seems that Taylor wants to erase it from her discography.
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Released in 2010, the original Better Than Revenge features the lyrics, “She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think / she’s an actress, whoa / She’s better known for the things that she does / On the mattress, whoa.”
On the new version, however, Swift swapped out the last portion with: “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches, whoa.”
One fan shared a snippet of the song on Twitter, which was quickly removed from the platform. Another posted a photo of the lyric booklet, confirming the swap.
Of course, Swift has never confirmed who the song is about. But it’s heavily rumoured that she penned it about her ex-boyfriend Joe Jonas, who hooked up with actress Camilla Belle shortly after their split.
Belle’s niece even seemed to confirm the rumour, sharing a TikTok with Better Than Revenge as the sound, captioning it “this song is about my aunt”.
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Ever since Swift announced her plan to re-record all her old music back in 2019, Swifties have been speculating whether or not she’d change this one problematic lyric.
Some fans are concerned that Swift chose to switch out the lyrics, because it means that the ‘original’ version, owned by Big Machine, is now more valuable.
“I thought I was gonna stream the original if she changed the lyrics. But now I don’t know. Like I know she only did this to please people. And I want to support her fully. But I love the original so so much ,” one person wrote on Twitter.
Back in 2014, the pop star regretted including the lyric on her album “I was 18 when I wrote that,” she told the Guardian. “That’s the age you are when you think someone can actually take your boyfriend. Then you grow up and realise no one take someone from you if they don’t want to leave.”
In the lead up to the release of Speak Now Taylor’s Version, the singer asked fans to be nice to her ex-boyfriends that are written about on the album.
”I’m 33 years old, I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19 except the songs I wrote,” she continued, adding her listeners should not “feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 billion years ago.”
The album also contains a song, Dear John, which is speculated to be written about her relationship with John Mayer. They dated when she was 19 and he was 32.
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