Red (Taylor’s Version) is Taylor Swift's fresh take on her fourth studio album of the same name.
One of the most hotly anticipated tracks was "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)", the much-awaited uncut version of the song originally released in October 2012.
Now, the ten-minute long power ballad has broken the record for the longest song to reach No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
It surpassed Don McLean’s “American Pie” which, with its 8 minutes and 37 seconds, topped the charts for four weeks in 1972.
However, “All Too Well” is only the highest of Swift’s 26 new entries on the Hot 100.
With Red (Taylor's version), the singer has shattered her own record for the most simultaneous US Hot 100 entries by a female: 26 tracks from the album made the Hot 100 chart, featuring successes such as "Red (Taylor's Version)". It surpassed her previous record (18 tracks), achieved with Lover in 2019.
With 26 songs appearing among the Hot 100, the studio album also marks the most simultaneous US Hot 100 new entries – an absolute first in the history of the chart since August 1958.
Only Drake's 2018 album Scorpion previously topped this number, with 27 Hot 100 entries. However, ‘only’ 22 among the Canadian rapper's 27 entries were new that week, allowing Swift's 30-track album to take the crown.
Undoubtedly leading this string of hits, "All Too Well" premiered at the top of worldwide charts and shortly reached a staggering amount of streaming sessions on Spotify.
Billboard noted that the 5 minutes 29 seconds version and the expanded one are summed up in one single entry, which reached a total of 54.4million US streams in the week of its debut.
In the past, Swift often hinted at a very first and explicit version of the song, recalling that she went "on a rant during a soundcheck" and her band joining in.
The session was subsequently cut down to a five-minute track, often regarded as one of Swift's best songs.
"All Too Well" debuted alongside a short movie featuring actors Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink – in the role of a Swift in her early twenties – and Swift herself.
The singer also tried out a new role at the other side of the camera, directing the short movie herself.
Since its premiere on 12 November 2021, the short film (which doubles up as the song's official music video) has gathered 47,023,472 views on YouTube.
The song's lyrics sparked speculation from fans everywhere and spread through the internet like wildfire.
"All Too Well" smashing a world record is undoubtedly a huge recognition of Swift's career, but it also carries a powerful message.
These new versions of old songs, as well as the previously unpublished ones "from the vault", celebrate Swift taking ownership of her own voice.
Perhaps "All Too Well" more than others expresses a Taylor Swift which her fans feel they haven't had the chance to hear before – unedited, uncut and free to pour her emotions into a song on her own terms.
With the do-overs of her older albums (a six-entry series that started with Fearless, originally released in 2008), Swift is seen to be re-taking ownership of her music after a dispute with music label Big Machine.
The freshly released Red (Taylor’s Version) is the most recent of Swift’s albums to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts in little over a year.
This success follows closely after Fearless (Taylor’s Version), featuring iconic songs such as "Love Story (Taylor's Version)", and the 2020 releases Folklore and Evermore.
Recently, a third version of "All Too Well" was released on Spotify: the "Sad Girl Autumn Version", an acoustic cover recorded at Long Pond Studio.
Whether Swift continues to release "her version" of earlier works or creates new tracks, one thing is clear - this chart-topping superstar will continue to break records for years to come.
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