Taylor Swift’s newly re-recorded version of Love Story outperforms the original on its first day

Taylor Swift’s re-recorded version of her 2008 single Love Story is off to a strong start after earning 10,000 download sales in its first day.

The new recording of Love Story was released after midnight on Friday, February 12, but it quickly eclipsed the original song’s current sales and even beat out many other contemporary tracks, according to Billboard.

Taylor, 31, re-recorded the entirety of her 2008 album Fearless as the first step in her plans to deprive the current owners of her masters of profit after Scooter Braun sold them in November 2020.

Only three songs from the week ending with February 4 were able to outsell Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’s 10,000 downloads from February 12: Tom MacDonald’s Fake Woke with 14,000 downloads, BTS’ Dynamite with 13,000 and Olivia Rodrigo’s Drivers License, also with 13,000 download sales.

That’s particularly impressive, as it was only on February 11 that Taylor announced she had rerecorded the album and announced the single’s release the following day.

Compared to the re-recorded version, the original Love Story only sold 200 downloads on February 12.

The song has sold a total of 6.13 million downloads since it was first released 12 years ago, but it had only sold a ‘negligible amount’ in the days leading up to the new version’s release.

The updated version of Love Story was played 144 times on the radio across 89 stations on February 12, compared to 67 plays that day for the original version.

That amounts to 777,000 audience impressions for Taylor’s Version, while the 2008 song only earned 227,000 impressions. 

The new single will chart separately from the 2008 version, as will the upcoming version of Fearless.

The two versions have been described as fairly similar, and Taylor even used the same musicians on her newest track as she did on the original, according to Pitchfork. 

This ensures that the same people who help craft the original recording will continue to be paid for their performances as people download and stream the new song. 

Fearless is just the first of Taylor’s first six albums to be rereleased. 

The songstress’ new, more instrumental rendition of her 2008 smash hit Love Story was slightly tweaked in the title to include ‘Taylor’s Version’ and which quickly became the number one trending hashtag on Twitter.  

A fresh spin on the song that really put her career on the map — from her album Fearless — the updated title seems to be her way of letting the world know that she has regained ownership of her catalog after Scooter Braun sold her masters in November. 

A scrapbook style video to accompany the ‘new’ track, old photos of the singer throughout the early days of her career appeared next to the song lyrics. 

Previously teasing that some aspects of her re-recorded songs and albums would be different, fans were relieved to find that no lyrics to her high school Romeo and Juliet love ballad had been altered. 

Speaking about the slight differences her fan could expect to hear on the track she said: 

‘One fun thing about rerecording Love Story is that I really wanted my touring band to get a chance to play on this version because you know they spent a lot of years playing this song over and over again.’ 

 Swifties were out in full force upon the track’s release, as the hashtag #Taylorsversion became the number one trending item on Twitter. 

Alex Goldschmidt who became known as the guy Swift helped propose to his boyfriend in 2019 was quick to point out that she could now say ‘owned by Taylor Swift’ along with her other song credits. 

Laguna Beach star Stephen Colletti who appeared in her music video for White Horse made a joke about reprising his role in the ‘Taylor’s Version’ of the track. 

Swift announced on Good Morning America Thursday that her next release will be a re-recorded version of her 2008 studio album Fearless.

On why she chose Fearless first, Swift said in an interview for Republic Records / MCA Nashville: ‘I always gravitated towards Fearless because I think that, as an album, it was a real coming-of-age. 

‘And I look back on that album and it fills me with such pride, and it was an album about hope, and lessons learned, and the effervescence of teenage youth and all that. What more fun than to go back and explore that?

‘I think that I tried to keep it as close to the original as possible, and the additional songs that I’ve added are songs that I think add insight into what the album almost was, because every time you make an album, you leave some songs off, and I think it’s really cool that the fans will get to have the full picture this time around,’ she added. 

Fans were only able to decipher the impending release date of the re-recording when she strategically capitalized letters in her social media announcement on Thursday, spelling out ‘April 9.’ 

Speaking about the extended 26 track album which will feature previously unheard tracks she said: 

‘I tried to keep it as close to the original as possible. The additional [from the vault] songs add insight into what the album almost was, because every time you make an album you leave some songs off. It’s really cool that the fans will get to have the full picture.’ 

Now in full control over her first six albums (after Braun sold the masters in November after acquiring her former label Big Loud in June) she has been able to re-record her full catalog under her new label Republic Records. 

She began the process while working on Evermore, saying that the juxtaposition of making new stuff while revisiting the old made her feel ‘really proud of sort of the scope of things.’

‘By then we had a great deal of Evermore done. I had shot a music video for Willow, but I was still writing and I was still recording. So there would be days where I’d be recording You Belong With Me, and then I’d be recording a song like Happiness (off Evermore).’ 

She said that all the songs she’s written over the years are equally as ‘valid’ to her, as she spoke about evolving from writing about ‘troubles in high school’ to the musings of her adult life that are reflected in her recent albums.   

Swift piggybacked on the process of revisiting the old parts of her while ushering in the new, as she tweeted: 

‘This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all of my music. I hope you’ll like this first outing as much as I liked traveling back in time to recreate it.’