‘Convinced me it was more’: Book reveals why Taylor Swift revisited major hit All Too Well
The song, in all its 10-minute glory, has become an anthem among fans, with a new book revealing what changed Taylor Swift’s mind about it.
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The secret reason Taylor Swift “changed her mind” about her fan favourite track All Too Well has been revealed in a new biography.
Rolling Stone music journalist and Swiftie Rob Sheffield has been writing about the superstar “since the get-go”.
An excerpt from Sheffield’s latest biography Heartbreak Is The National Anthem has revealed the moment Swift told him she’d “changed (her) mind” about her track All Too Well, which has topped Sheffield’s ranked list of all Swift’s songs, published on Rolling Stone.
“On opening night of the Reputation tour in 2018, in Glendale, Arizona, she warned me backstage she had a surprise,” Sheffield wrote.
“‘I added All Too Well to the set because of you’, she said.
“‘It’s number one on your list. You changed my mind about that song. You convinced me it was more than just a Red Tour song’.
“My trusty poker face must have failed me because she looked concerned and asked, ‘Is it OK I told you this?’
“She sang a solo acoustic-guitar version that night – it was rare, I was there.
“But lest you get delusional about my influence, she immediately axed it from the set – that was just her wildcard spot – and played it only a handful of times for the rest of the tour.
“Meanwhile, she did Bad Blood every night. Just in case you’ve got her confused with somebody who listens to opinions.”
All Too Well – one of Sheffield’s favourites (unlike Bad Blood, which is at the bottom of his list) – was originally released on Swift’s 2012 album Red but not as a single.
Released as track five – all fifth tracks on Swift’s albums widely regarded as her most emotive – the song is rumoured to be about her relationship with actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
However, after letting slip to fans that she’d had to cut the song down from a 10-minute version to the 5½ minute track originally released in 2012, Swift revisited the song in 2021 with Red (Taylor’s Version).
With lines “f**k the patriarchy” and “you call me up again just to break me like a promise”, the longer version has been solidified as an anthem among fans, particularly during Swift’s Era’s Tour when she belts out the entire 10 minutes.
Swift also directed a short film based on the song starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink.
As well as meeting Swift backstage, Sheffield wrote he’d been to her apartment to listen to new albums “for security reasons”, as it’s the “only place where (Swift) could guarantee there weren’t any hidden microphones”.
He described her as “truly a geek’s geek” when it comes to music but also a “generous laugher at terrible jokes”, which he discovered in another backstage meeting.
“Tragically, I learned this one night backstage on the 1989 tour after the US Olympic women’s soccer team gave her an honorary team jersey, (Number thirteen, naturally.),” Sheffield wrote.
“I said, ‘You’re wearing your new jersey – in New Jersey!’ It was an Olympic-level athletic effort for her to force out a politely pained demi-laugh, to my undying shame, but I can say I have witnessed the sight of Taylor Swift being insincere, and it was downright heartwarming how bad she was at it.”
Discussing Swift’s sixth studio album Reputation – which was released following a feud with Kanye West and his ex-wife Kim Kardashian – Sheffield emphasised how much hate Swift received by beginning the chapter describing a piece of Australian street art.
“A sidewalk in Australia: one of the world’s most famous street artists, Lushsux, creates a mural in Melbourne, saying, ‘In Loving Memory of Taylor Swift, 1989–2016’. He adds, ‘No tags please. Respect the dead’.”
It’s not the only mention Australia gets, with a much happier memory of Swift writing a song while touring Australia also included.
Sheffield wrote that Canadian-American singer Joni Mitchell’s song Blue was “formative while Swift was writing Red, as she wrote in her journals, later published as part of the 2019 Lover Diaries”.
‘“I’ve been thinking about getting old and irrelevancy and how all my heroes ended up alone,” Swift wrote in 2011 Sheffield said. ‘I wrote a song on the plane ride from Sydney to Perth on the Appalachian dulcimer I bought the day of my flight. I bought it because Joni played on most of the record. I taught myself to play A Case of You. (Mitchell wrote the songs on Blue while backpacking through Europe, where a dulcimer was easier to carry than a guitar).
‘“I wrote a song on it called Nothing New and it’s about being scared of ageing and things changing and losing what you have’”
Sheffield also noted Swift wrote The Lucky One while in Australia, a song many believe is about Mitchell despite Sheffield arguing her story is different to Swift’s lyrics “You took your money and your dignity and got the hell out.”.
“But this isn’t Mitchell’s story at all – she kept making music long after her first wave of fame faded, even fighting her way back to the stage after a near-fatal brain aneurysm. She wasn’t precious about her dignity, either – her Eighties included a duet with Billy Idol. The last thing she would have chosen was getting the hell out. But Taylor just stole what she needed from Joni’s story and took it down her own road.”
Heartbreak Is The National Anthem will be published on November 13 in Australia by HQ Non-Fiction.
Sheffield, a huge fan of Swift, thanked Swift’s publicist Tree Paine in the acknowledgments section of his book.
“Thanks to Tree Paine, queen of the universe, who is not merely the coolest in any room she’s in but also the one who is always correct about the Depeche Mode discography,” Sheffield wrote.
Originally published as ‘Convinced me it was more’: Book reveals why Taylor Swift revisited major hit All Too Well