Popular Music Ontology (Taylor’s Version): Re-Recordings, the Rock Ideology, and Taylor Swift

Abstract

In 2019, Taylor Swift announced “Taylor’s Version,” a re-recording project for her first six studio albums. Scholars such as P.D. Magnus and Theodore Gracyk have positioned “Taylor’s Version” as a form of covering within pop music ontology. I argue, instead, that re-recordings are contingent on an artist’s genre positioning and harbor a unique relationship to their respective original recordings that is different from covers. By comparing “Taylor’s Version” to other instances of re-recordings in popular music, I suggest that re-recordings should take up their own ontological positioning as a narrowly defined phonographic practice adjacent to covers within a post-rock ideology.

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