Taylor Swift shares ‘Sad Girl Autumn’ version of ‘All Too Well’
Taylor Swift is adeptly ushering in Sad Girl Autumn with a brand new version of “All Too Well.” She recorded the rendition with her “besties” Aaron Dessner from the National and Jonathan Low.
“One of the saddest songs I’ve ever written just got sadder,” Swift posted on Twitter, and it isn’t hyperbole. She claimed that she drove to Long Pond Studios in upstate New York to record the song with Dessner and Low. Her 2020 Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions documentary was also set at the isolated studio in the woods.
Similar to the track that appears on Red (Taylor’s Version), the song is an extended 10-minute poignant reflection on a heart-wrenching breakup. The shorter original track appeared on 2012’s Red. The new take earns its Sad Girl stripes with its soft piano beginnings buoying her hushed opening vocal. It also features lush layering that accentuates the emotional lyrics as the song progresses.
Recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond Studios, just like parts of both of her 2020 albums ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, the song takes on a much more sombre mood, with moody piano replacing the original’s twangy acoustic guitar.
“I had never played ‘All Too Well’ but I’ve listened to it so many times it must have been seared into my musical memory,” Dessner said of the song in a post on Instagram.
“Somehow this Sad Girl Autumn Version felt like it was already in the brisk air. It felt so good to play it on the creaky ‘Cardigan’ piano and Taylor’s performance is devastatingly beautiful.”
This is now, at least, the fifth version of the song available, and the fourth to be released in the past week. Swift’s re-recording of the original – and the first 10-minute iteration of the song – appears on ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’, which arrived last Friday (November 11). She then released a live acoustic version of the sprawling track after performing it at the premiere of the song’s accompanying short film.
The day following the album’s release, Swift performed the song in full on Saturday Night Live, where she also joined Pete Davidson for a sketch about “three sad virgins”.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ broke a Spotify streaming record, accruing the most first-day streams by a female artist in Spotify history, with over 90 million streams.
The latest version of the track follows the release of the epic Swift-directed All Too Well short film starring Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien.
Earlier in the week, Swift dropped the video for “I Bet You Think About Me,” which was directed by Blake Lively.
Listen to ‘All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version)’ in full below.
—Silviya.Y
