The Atlantic
Taylor Swift Knew Everything When She Was Young
The singer’s rerecording of her second album makes a statement about her past and delivers a blow to her rivals.
At 18, Taylor Swift had some regrets. Across her smash second album,
Fearless, Swift sang about moments she wanted to relive and, in some cases, rewrite. “Wish you could go back / And tell yourself what you know now,” she said on “15,” a reminiscence about her freshman year of high school. On “White Horse,” she chided, “Stupid girl, I should’ve known,” as she thought back to a breakup. The album captured the act of painting over naïveté with experience a common process in adolescence, when a couple of months of aging can feel like a lifetime of education.