True to her word, Taylor Swift’s efforts to re-create her first six albums—the masters of which have been wrapped up in the long and upsetting debacle surrounding her break from former label Big Machine for years now—has finally borne fruit. And hey: You won’t even have to sit through a Match.com ad about Satan finding love in order to finally hear “Taylor’s Version” of her 2008 hit “Love Story,” because Swift just released the re-recorded version online in full tonight.
And lo and behold, it is, indeed, “Love Story,” in all its “Still bridging the gap between country, pop, and sheer romantic melodrama” glory. Anyone worried that Swift might give into her inner George Lucas here and tinker with the originals can probably put those fears to rest: While the die-hard Swifties could probably pick out a few differences (her twang is maybe a little less distinct, her voice a little deeper, the mix a bit clearer overall), 31-year-old Swift sounds eerily similar to the 18-year-old version that can be heard belting out on the original Fearless recordings. The only major difference, really, is the video, which subs out period-piece romance for pictures of a decade-plus of Swift fans taking pictures with their star.
The full version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is scheduled to come out on April 9.