Waiting for the Right Time Mission #9

The re-recording of Red captured me in a way it never could’ve when I was a teenager.

Happy Midnights Eve to all who celebrate. If you didn’t already know, let me help reintroduce you to society: Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album is set to release tomorrow at midnight. 10! That makes me feel old—I say we honor that.

TLDR; In this newsletter each week, I tackle something I’ve been avoiding. Or, waiting for the right time to execute.

Mission: Revisit Red

Taylor Swift’s music and I have had a longer relationship than most of the people I intimately know. I became devout when she released one of her first singles, “Tear Drops on My Guitar” while I was in elementary school. And in that pew I have remained.

I, like many others, have mile-markered my life with the release of each album. Each one roots me in a very specific place—queuing them up is like shaking a snow globe. Taylor’s self-titled and I met in car rides to school, strapped into the backseat of a minivan. “You’re the song I keep singing in the car, don’t know why I do,” she crooned to Drew over the side door speakers and I sang right back. Fearless wrote itself down on my forearms in ink during middle school math classes. Once Speak Now rolled around I’d upgraded to cherry-picking lyrics from “Enchanted” to paste on my Facebook wall beside a stream of <3s. 1989 followed me through FIU’s nature preserve and rode alongside me as I picked up my best friend for school, eyes half-shut on junior year mornings. (The same morning I backed over her mailbox.) The fall Reputation released, I roamed through Chicago’s zoo lights and hid from the cold at my favorite coffee shop with budding friendships. I walked home in the chill and played “New Year’s Day” on my guitar back in a dorm emptying out for the holidays. Lover met me on the NYC subway, the angsty walk from the station to my apartment—worshipping the “The Archer” and wondering what was wrong with the anxious girl living out her greatest fantasies. I sobbed to Folklore’s “August” as my college town receded in the rearview mirror and I drove down my street one more time. I spent the holidays screaming “Champagne Problems” from Evermore in my Nissan, not knowing I was potentially scaring a future fiancé who would be down on one knee three months later.

But there is one album missing from that list: Red. I don’t think I was all ready to hear what Red had to say when it was introduced to the world—it’ll be 10 years old this weekend. I didn’t stop to take a photo of the place Taylor caught me in at the time. Yet, ironically enough, the album gave me my favorite song, “All Too Well.”

The re-recording of Red captured me in a way it never could’ve when I was a teenager. On release day, nearly a year ago now, I swiped on a red lipstick I hadn’t wrestled open since 2019. I spent the day revisiting old favorites like “The Lucky One” and “Holy Ground.” And once I’d finally logged off, the show began. We streamed the “All Too Well” short film. I watched Taylor perform the song on SNL, once or twice, or maybe too many times to count. The film felt like watching the movie that looped in my mind, except with added, damning details and a lens that only comes with years lived. The performance was chilling. I watched as the stage turned blood red, and the percussion paused, so she could deliver the knife that was years in the making. That performance opened something in me. For years, I’d been struggling with starts and stops when it came to my writing. A lot got wrapped up in it—money, survival, judgment, fear that my words really held no power. And I’d spent a lot of time trying to find my voice again.

“I want to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it,” Taylor wrote in both versions of the song. I saw myself in Sadie Smith, as she rolled in bed staring at nothing but the light fixture on the ceiling. Lying so much your back begins to ache. Ultimately, Red (TV) grabbed me by the hand and led me to a weekend of coffee shops, with headphones dutifully plugged in, page after page of notebooks filling up with the words I thought I’d tucked away in a forgotten spot. Those first twangs of guitar on that song were magic.

Taken that weekend.

The music has continued to consume me since—if it doesn’t dominate my Spotify Wrapped this year I’ll know the company is a liar. But much of the art around it, the short film, her performance, has remained in a time capsule of sorts. What better week to revive them?

I had to get my set up just right. Candles lit, all lights off, Youtube on the television. I watched the film first. The images and chapters help convey part of the song I think often gets lost in the noise—the idea that each chorus is the auditory version of getting sucked back into blissful moments. The same ones that eventually end up tinged with sourness by verses that build on each other. Sadie Smith and Dylan O’Brien are road tripping upstate, sharing earbuds, lip-locked, interlacing fingers. Then he’s yelling into the phone and the illusion shatters—leaving her picking up pieces in a stranded car. They’re at each other’s throats by the kitchen sink in the evening, then they’re dancing in a refrigerator light glow. While we watch we get reeled back in every time. Until we don’t. Sadie is given the blessing she can’t even recognize yet.

But it’s Taylor’s performance on SNL that really speaks to me every time. Immediately as I began to rewatch, I could feel the skin on the backs of my arms bristle. Taylor got to do what a lot of us wish we could. She’s telling her side of the story, with an audience. She’s revisiting a life-altering moment with a critical eye. She’s declaring I’ll forgive, but I’ll never forget.

“But when do stadiums ever line up to hear a woman scream about her anger and refusal to forgive?” I wrote in an essay back in college. Here it is. And there is power in that. Then verse six arrives. The music cuts. The lights bathe her in red and she sings, “I was never good at telling jokes, but the punch line goes, I'll get older, but your lovers stay my age." Her eyes flit in a side glance and we see the rage shadow her face, just for a second. The moment passes. But then the haunting outro begins. She lays out her affirmation before us. This story happened—no one can refute that. The performance ends with Taylor and her two backup vocalists’ words floating around us: “Wind in my hair, I was there, I was there. Down the stairs, I was there, I was there. Sacred prayer, I was there, I was there. It was rare, I remember it.” The history is now written. There’s no denying it once it hangs in the air.

Ultimately, Red is a coming-of-age album. Growing pains cry out from these lyrics. From grappling with aging out of the “perfect age” to be a woman (frozen at 17) in “Nothing New,” to falling into complicated situations despite knowing better in “I Knew You Were Trouble.” I wasn’t ready to meet Taylor here back then. But a year ago, I needed to reflect on what happened during those tumultuous years. Revisit my own All Too Well’s, consider how they shaped the story I’ve been telling about myself. I needed to remember and then put them to rest. After that weekend, I felt unplugged. Like I could write silly diatribes about black skirts, and serious reflections on reaching a quarter of a century of living. Like I could write a tragedy, an odyssey, and a glitter gel pen lyric.

This is why the prospect of Midnights excites me. Taylor and I are meeting again. And this time, I’m game for anything. I think together, Midnights and I will forge a new place. I wonder where I might say she met me a year from now.

On a scale of waiting for the right time to facing my dread, I would say this week is a success.

P.