They delete even innocent texts and arouse her boyfriend’s suspicion with their cagey ha-ha-has. He and the woman both know they’re walking a moral high wire. These “lost” verses might be another reclamation, reinstating emotions once deemed unbecoming for a young woman. That perspective shift is only underlined by the reason we’re hearing this expanded version at all: In 2019, Swift’s former label, and the six albums she made there, were sold to a music executive she described as a “bully,” prompting her to rerecord them in an effort to reclaim ownership of her work and devalue his investment. Swift is now 32, and the song’s new power comes from her understanding that she deserved better than she ever knew to expect at 21. The restored verses of “All Too Well” add a level of anger, as Swift accuses her heartbreaker of insincerity, coldness and having a conspicuous thing for younger women. Yet no amount of compulsive litigation can explain how your soul mate wound up such an inscrutable mystery.
USING TAYLOR SWITFTS NEVER GROW UP SONG FOR SLIDE SHOW FULL
These perplexed epics demand to be told in their full complexity, every glance and item of clothing and sparkling scene another crucial scrap of proof that the author didn’t imagine this. But here, the relentless confession is the appeal. Online, it’s usually brevity that begets pop success. Their heft recalls the moment when a friend switches from texts to unwieldy voice notes - the scope of their dilemma beyond what a blue iMessage bubble can contain. These are unusually purgative songs, speaking to their authors’ abiding confusion at how the path to romance can dogleg so brutally. As protagonists, Swift and Tyler are old enough to try out parts of adult relationships - romantic getaways, intimate private jokes - but their naïve faith in their relationships obscures the germinating seeds of failure. “All Too Well” and “Wilshire” both reflect something agonizingly specific about young heartbreak. Even at the outset of this song, which runs nearly nine minutes, we know he’ll be left empty-handed.
“They say, ‘Bros over hoes’/I’m like, Hmm, nah, hey/I would rather hold your hand than have a cool handshake,” he admits furtively. He’s racked with despair over his loyalties. He knows this because - worse still - Tyler is friends with the guy. On “Wilshire,” the highlight of Tyler’s 2021 album, “Call Me if You Get Lost,” the rapper brings a love interest to his mother’s tennis spot despite being well aware that his crush already has a boyfriend. Swift could compare notes with the mother of Tyler, the Creator. Just one line later, the father sits with his anxious daughter as she watches the door for her boyfriend’s arrival on a pivotal birthday - and he remarks, with exquisite tact, “It’s supposed to be fun, turning 21.” In one of them, Swift’s new, older boyfriend charms her father “with self-effacing jokes/sipping coffee like you were on a late-night show.” But the perfect-suitor charade soon falters. One is Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” a fan favorite from her 2012 album, “Red,” that she has newly rereleased - now 10 minutes long, with the inclusion of its long-mythologized “lost” verses. In two of pop’s newest, most comprehensive accounts of heartbreak, this is the moment that might outstrip all the other agonies: the shame of introducing a lover to a parent whose welcoming smile almost certainly conceals a bitten tongue. And maybe you don’t - but if your parents are worthy of the faith you’ve placed in them, they’ll let you make your own mistakes. Maybe you get the approval you secretly crave. One way to define the arrival of adulthood might be when introducing a new partner to your parents is no longer cause for embarrassment.
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