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Taylor Swift mines her vault of demos for never-released song with Maren Morris

Taylor Swift holds her Grammy trophy on a red carpet
Taylor Swift with her Grammy for album of the year at the 63rd Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Taylor Swift’s grand plan to rerecord her back catalog is moving along, well, swiftly, with the second single off her revamped “Fearless” album. But unlike the last single, this one was never included on “Fearless” in the first place.

On Thursday night, Swift released her updated rendition of “You All Over Me,” the first song the country-pop sensation has resurrected from demos that ended up on the cutting-room floor when “Fearless” came out in 2008. Featured on the track is fellow country artist Maren Morris, who comes in during the wistful chorus.

“One thing I’ve been loving about these From The Vault songs is that they’ve never been heard, so I can experiment, play, and even include some of my favorite artists,” Swift tweeted this week while announcing her latest release. “I’m really excited to have @MarenMorris singing background vocals on this song!!”

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Morris celebrated the collaboration on social media as well, expressing her gratitude for both Swift and producer Aaron Dessner, a founding member of rock band the National who also worked closely with Swift on her previous two studio collections, “Folklore” and “Evermore.”

“Whether it’s the Disney vault or the TS vault, you know it’s gonna be good,” Morris wrote on Instagram. “My favorite thing that I don’t get to do very often is to slip into someone’s world and just harmonize. Thank you @taylorswift for having me be a small part of your reimagining of the Fearless era.”

“You All Over Me” is the most recent development in Swift’s mission to retrace her first six albums in spite of music mogul Scooter Braun, who acquired them against the singer-songwriter’s wishes in 2019. Amid an ongoing, high-profile feud with Swift over ownership rights, Braun sold her masters in November for more than $300 million.

Last month, Swift debuted “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” a reimagined take on the “Romeo & Juliet”-inspired smash that has amassed more than 47 million streams on Spotify and 19 million views on YouTube. (By Friday morning, the lyric video for “You All Over Me” had already racked up more than a million views on YouTube.)

“And I lived, and I learned, had you, got burned / Held out, held on / God knows, too long,” Swift sings on her March release. “Wasted time, lost tеars, swore I’d get out of herе / But no amount of freedom gets you clean / I still got you all over me.”

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The highly anticipated arrival of “You All Over Me” comes just weeks after Swift made history at the 2021 Grammy Awards as the first woman to win album of the year three times. The “Folklore” artist is only the fourth musician to achieve such a feat, joining Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder.

“[M]ostly we just want to thank the fans,” Swift said during her Grammy acceptance speech earlier this month. “You guys met us in this imaginary world that we created, and we can’t tell you how honored we are forever by this.”

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