Reviving the Spirit of 2008

Taylor Swift’s new bonus track, “You All Over Me,” brings back the Fearless era

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Beth Garrabrant

The cover art for Taylor Swift’s upcoming album, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)”

Meghan Williamson, Design and Layout Editor

After holding out for weeks, Taylor Swift’s “You All Over Me” has finally arrived. Initially written for the three-time Grammy Album of the Year winner’s 2008 album Fearless, the previously-unreleased song finally dropped on all streaming platforms at midnight.

The track, which features vocals by country singer Maren Morris and was co-written by songwriter Scooter Carusoe, giving it a distinctly country flavor, is part of Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the first album in the singer’s plan to rerecord her catalog after the masters of her first six albums were sold by Scooter Braun and Big Machine Records last fall.

The song itself was recorded by Swift in 2008, but not released. The now re-recorded song is a soft, repentant love song that harshly rebukes a past lover that did her wrong. My immediate verdict of the song is that the writing itself is very ‘old Taylor’, showing off just how much her songwriting style has changed since 12 years ago.

The song can almost be compared to isn’t from her album “Fearless,” but instead “1989”: Lyrically, it’s kind of a prequel to that album’s “Clean.” There’s a realm of cleverness to how she echoes the “reminds me of you” punchline a half-stanza later with a comparison to a overly worn dollar bill: “You can’t change where it’s been — reminds me of me.” “The best and worst day of June was the one that I met you”… well, he’s clearly her favorite mistake. What makes the song click to me is the chorus, when Swift sings, “No amount of freedom gets you clean / I’ve still got you all over me.” There’s a double entendre of emotion and symbolism there — “all over me” as in the smell of his clothes she still wears, and “all over me” as in the dude has moved on — well, that’s kind of classic country, right there.

Overall, this song gets two thumbs up in my book, but that’s just because I first fell in love with Taylor Swift when she came out with “Fearless.”