Taylor Swift
Beth GarrabrantTaylor Swift isn’t the only one leaning into the Taylor’s Version era. While the singer is busy promoting the 30-track re-recorded version of her beloved Red album, the nation’s largest chain of radio stations, iHeartRadio, announced on Tuesday (Nov. 16) that fans listening to their 850 stations will only be able to hear the revamped titles on their network.
“iHeartRadio is replacing all of Taylor’s previous albums with the Taylor’s Version of each of them as Taylor releases each project, and will play only Taylor’s Version of her songs on the air,” read a story from iHeartRadio.
“Whenever Taylor re-records a new track, we immediately replace the old versions. Our stations will always deliver songs that artists are eager to share and fans want to hear,” said iHeartRadio chief programming officer Tom Poleman. “Listeners have made it known that they cannot wait to hear Taylor’s Version of each track. We are thrilled to provide a platform to share those with them, as well as the stories behind the songs from Taylor herself.”
According to iHeart, Swifties are already hearing Taylor’s Version versions on their stations, with Mediabase reporting that this week the top ten Version songs played include (in order): “Message In A Bottle (Taylor’s Version),” “I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version),” “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version),” “You Belong With Me (Taylor’s Version),” “I Knew You Were Trouble (Taylor’s Version),” “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor’s Version),” and “22 (Taylor’s Version).”
So far, Swift has released Taylor’s Versions of her 2012 Red album and 2008’s Fearless, which both feature newly recorded takes on the original collections plus some unheard or newly recorded “From the Vault” tracks written during those eras but not included on the originals. The re-recording project began last year after the singer’s former label, Big Machine Group, was sold by manager Scooter Braun for $300 million in a deal that included the master rights to Swift’s first six albums.
NEWS
Supergrass are teasing an upcoming announcement with fans, according to a new post.
The British band, fronted by Gaz Coombes, shared a cryptic new post across their social media channels this morning (September 13), suggesting to fans that a new announcement is on the way.
Posted at 9am BST, the post simply shared artwork of the band’s logo in red, alongside next Monday’s date, September 16. In the caption, the band simply wrote: “Sign up now”, alongside a link to their website’s homepage.
Upon clicking the link, the page prompts fans to sign up for future updates, and asks them to input both their email address and the country they live in. Check out the post below.
While details on the announcement remain sparse, the post has already caught fans’ attention, with some speculating that the news could be around the upcoming 30th anniversary of their debut album, ‘I Should Coco’.
Released in May 1995, the release marked the record that first put the band on the map, and contained singles ‘Mansize Rooster’, ‘Caught By The Fuzz, ‘Lose It’ and ‘Lenny’. It also saw Coombes and Co. nominated at the 1995 Mercury Prize, and contained what would soon become their biggest track to date, the Ivor-Novello winning ‘Alright’.
At time of writing, the band haven’t shared any further indication as to whether the announcement is related to the huge upcoming milestone – whether it be an anniversary tour or reissue – nor whether it has anything to do with new music that could be on the way.
The band’s last studio album was ‘Diamond Hoo Ha’, which arrived in 2008. Since then, they have shared remastered versions of both their 1999 self-titled album and their 2003 record ‘Life On Other Planets’.
In other news around the band, last year it was reported that the band’s frontman joined Johnny Marr onstage last month to perform The Smiths‘ classic ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ at Lakefest 2023.
Before then, Coombes opened up about how “nervous” he was about reuniting Supergrass following the success of his solo albums.
Supergrass split up in 2010 but reunited for a series of live shows in 2019. They released a live album in 2020, Live On Other Planets, to celebrate their 25th anniversary and raise money for grassroots venues affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Having got into a flow and the last two albums having done so well, it seemed a bit odd, like a backward step,” he said. “But then I was confident that I could operate both things together and it seems that I did, because I was obviously writing this record mainly during the reunion so I feel like I made best use of both things.”
Coombes’ fourth solo album, ‘Turn The Car Around’, came out in January of last year.
