By minting new versions of her albums amid an industry dispute, Swift has moved on from the originals. Can fans with profound connections to them do the same?
In early April, Rebs Fisher-Jackson, a 23-year-old, self-identifying Swiftie – the collective name for fans of the singer-songwriter
Taylor Swift – listened to her album Fearless for the final time. “I made my peace with it,” she says with the air of a mourner.
Rebs was one of millions of fans saying goodbye to a once-beloved album, Swift’s second, originally released in 2008. On message boards, they posted infographics about how to hide Fearless’s tracks on Spotify and shared how to illegally download the album. To an outsider, it may have looked like Swifties, one of the largest and most devoted fanbases in pop, had turned against the
Singer, but they were actually rallying around her as she made the boldest business manoeuvre of her career.