The Flashback Starts

If lockdowns continue for long enough, one wonders if TAYLOR SWIFT will eventually get around to re-recording the two albums she recorded in the first year of the pandemic, note for note, with new players, just because. In the meantime, we now know Swift recorded a third album during pandy year one—a note-for-note re-creation of her 2008 blockbuster FEARLESS, thus beginning her long-promised/threatened project to re-record her entire BIG MACHINE discography.

We've known for quite some time she wasn't kidding about this this, but now we really, really know. I mean, wow. That's my rough overlay of the old and new versions of "LOVE STORY," her first top 10 single. The new one, helpfully and pointedly titled "Love Story (Taylor's Version)," was released this morning as a valentine for her fans. It will double as an anti-valentine for SCOOTER BRAUN, who acquired Swift's old masters when he bought Big Machine in 2019. He flipped them a year later to the investment firm SHAMROCK CAPITAL but apparently still stands to profit from their usage. Swift does not want him profiting from anything of hers.

She wants streamers to stream, radio programmers to program, and music supervisors to license her new versions, and only her new versions. Supervisors may have no choice since Swift, as a songwriter, can veto any movie or TV usage she doesn't like. I have no idea what radio will do. But based on the care Swift put into getting every detail right, I can't think of any reason why her biggest fans on SPOTIFY and elsewhere won't opt for the new versions. Swift is setting up and promoting FEARLESS (TAYLOR'S VERSION), which comes out in April, as a new album, essentially providing her own answer, in advance, to the question of will anyone care. They'd care even without the six previously unreleased songs she's adding to the album, but there's that, too. They'll care because they know their care will be rewarded. The metadata, including updated song and album titles and year of release, will make it easy to find and stream the right ones. Respect. If lockdowns continue for long enough, maybe Swift can start a publicity and marketing agency, too.

Where Have I Known You Before

No artist should be measured by the number of GRAMMY AWARDS on their shelves—the more you have, the less you need anyone to know—but the fact that the most awarded jazz musician of all died with two more nominations still pending tells you something about how tireless, prolific and beloved he was. And how central CHICK COREA was to the last half-century of jazz. As a bandleader, he was a technically gifted pianist with an ear for magnetic melodies—crowd-pleasing and crowd-challenging at the same time. As the electric pianist in MILES DAVIS' IN A SILENT WAY and BITCHES BREW bands, he helped push jazz forward into the funk, rock and psychedelic 1970s. And as the founder of RETURN TO FOREVER, the jazz fusion group that brought him his greatest fame (and the first of those Grammys, in 1976), Corea and his crew all but created a new genre out of jazz, rock, Brazilian music and a few other ground-shifting inputs. Return to Forever was among the first jazz groups I was exposed to, and for a while I assumed all jazz sounded exactly like that. For a while, perhaps, it did. He kept going, nonstop, for another 40-plus years. RIP.

This Is Not a Collection of Stories About Morgan Wallen

This is a collection of stories about country music and the country music industry and a longstanding culture and a dialogue about that culture that started because of something one man said but this is not a collection of stories about one man. MusicSET: "This Is Not a Set About Morgan Wallen."

Love Love Love

Billboard's 50 biggest love songs of all-time, based on advanced chart analytics that demote what I assumed was #1 to a lowly #6. Then again, the actual #1 is a duet, which makes love-song sense... Alternatively, 14 asexual anthems for Valentine's Day... JUSTIN BIEBER will livestream what's being billed as TIKTOK's first full-length concert Sunday at 9pm ET... YOUTUBE reaction stars TWINSTHENEWTREND react to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE's version of themselves... STEELY DAN, bandsplained... A certain Washington daughter of infamous Washington parents who aren't quite as relevant as they were five or six months ago is among the hopefuls who'll appear on Sunday's premiere of the new season of AMERICAN IDOL. And since this is a newsletter about this but not that, this shall be the last time any of this will be mentioned here unless it turns out she can sing... MusicREDEF is taking a long weekend in honor of Presidents' Day. We'll be back in your inbox Tuesday morning. In the meantime...

It's Friday

And that means new music from enfant terrible British rapper SLOWTHAI; jazz supergroup R+R=NOW, featuring ROBERT GLASPER, TERRACE MARTIN, CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH and more; Miami rapper SMOKEPURPP, whose PSYCHO EP pays homage to OZZY OSBOURNE; singer/songwriter CLAUD, the first artist signed to PHOEBE BRIDGERS' SADDEST FACTORY label; country statesmen FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE, whose fifth album will be followed by solo projects but who swear they're not breaking up; PENTATONIX's first album of originals in five years; the soundtracks to JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH, featuring H.E.R., LIL DURK, a JAY-Z/NIPSEY HUSSLE collab and lots of other boldface names, and SIA's film MUSIC, which also serves as a new studio album by the fledgling writer/director; and albums from JPEGMAFIA, ANIKA PYLE, ROBIN THICKE, the PRETTY RECKLESS, FOR YOUR HEALTH, ABIOTIC, YOKO MIWA, JAKOB BRO, PALE WAVES, GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT, LAUREN AUDER, CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH, BODIES OF WATER, HIS NAME IS ALIVE, CHRIS CRACK, CALLISTA CLARK, STEADY HOLIDAY, DJANGO DJANGO and TEENAGE WRIST.