“Wildest Dreams” (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift, Sunday (Updated Repost), Sunday, February 18, 2024

 In 2021 the 2015 hit “Wildest Dreams” became a TikTok  trend. Of course this was in the middle of Swift’s massive project to release re-recordings of her studio records due to her inability to buy the rights to her original recordings. In the spring of last year, she released a massive re-recording of Fearless, the album that propelled the then teen singer to being one of the biggest internationally-recognized music stars. Responding to the TikTok trend, Swift posted her own take on it with the re-recorded version, despite the fact that the singer had stated that she would release her version of Red, 1989’s predecessor and the album that transitioned the singer’s style from Country to Pop, before any of her versions of songs from 1989 would be released. 

SAY YOU’LL REMEMBER ME. Last year was the year of Taylor Swift, which culminated with the release of  Taylor’s Version of 1989. In 2014, the album officially marked Swift’s leaving Country music in full pursuit of a pop stardom. That pursuit started during Fearless and had become a bit of a split identity on Red, with half of the songs sounding organic and the other half synthetic. It’s still hotly contested whether the Jack Antonoff interpretations of Max Martin/Shellback productions match or exceed the originals. I wrote two years ago that I thought that Swift would release 1989 as the last of her re-recordings because it was her biggest album. The album, with its seemingly infinite merchandising options, has already been projected to outsell the massive 2014 record. The critics at Switched on Pop, when reviewing Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) wondered about the future of Taylor Swift re-recording, particularly in light that 1989  had already been announced at the time of the review and that the remaining albums in the re-recording series Reputation and the eponymous debut record, feel the least relevant today.  What does a teenage Taylor and a dated EDM record have for a 2024 audience?

HIS CLOTHES ARE IN MY ROOM. “Wildest Dreams” wasn’t immediately a standout track from 1989, particularly on a Max Martin/Shellback-produced album calculated for the maximum amount of bangers. But just as a good perfume has three notes—top, middle, and base—Taylor Swift’s 2014 record has immediate catchiness and a lingering effect. More specifically, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been humming both songs “Wildest Dreams” and “This Love” for years without actually identifying them as Taylor Swift songs. You know when you’re walking and you get an ear worm from out of nowhere and you might even thing it’s an original melody? That’s what some Taylor Swift songs do. Another thing that makes “Wildest Dreams” familiar is that it sounds similar to Lana Del Rey’s 2012 song “Without You” from Born to Die.  Songs like “Wildest Dreams” introduce more sexual innuendo than her previous work, and 1989 and Reputation seem to have some similar influences with Lana Del Rey’s earlier work.   I’m interested in reading more about Kutter Callaway’s theory about Taylor Swift’s music’s influence on evangelicals and non-evangelicals in America. In a way, 1989 is the album that Taylor Swift declared that she was an adult and that she was more in charge of her destiny. I just wonder what effect this newly grown-up Taylor had on her  fans who were raised more conservatively? Personally being two and a half years older than Swift and raised in a conservative context, it was just prior to 1989’s release that I started taking charge of my destiny outside of my conservative context. My wildest dreams were no longer so far off.

Read the lyrics on Genius.

Original video:

Taylor’s version: