Taylor Swift’s newly re-recorded version of Love Story outperforms the original

Taylor Swift‘s re-recorded version of her 2008 single Love Story is off to a strong start after earning 10,000 download sales in its first day.

The new recording of Love Story was released after midnight on Friday, February 12, but it quickly eclipsed the original song’s current sales and even beat out many other contemporary tracks, according to Billboard.

Taylor, 31, re-recorded the entirety of her 2008 album Fearless as the first step in her plans to deprive the current owners of her masters of profit after Scooter Braun sold them in November 2020.

Strong start: Taylor Swift’s re-recording of Love Story earned 10,000 download sales on its first day of release, according to Billboard; seen in 2019 in LA

Only three songs from the week ending with February 4 were able to outsell Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’s 10,000 downloads from February 12: Tom MacDonald’s Fake Woke with 14,000 downloads, BTS’ Dynamite with 13,000 and Olivia Rodrigo’s Drivers License, also with 13,000 download sales.

That’s particularly impressive, as it was only on February 11 that Taylor announced she had rerecorded the album and announced the single’s release the following day.

Compared to the re-recorded version, the original Love Story only sold 200 downloads on February 12.

The song has sold a total of 6.13 million downloads since it was first released 12 years ago, but it had only sold a ‘negligible amount’ in the days leading up to the new version’s release.

Blown away: By comparison, only three songs sold more than 10,000 downloads in the entire week leading up to the release of Love Story (Taylor’s Version); Taylor pictured in the artwork for her new single

On top: The new song significantly outperformed the original on the radio on February 12. It earned 777,000 audience impressions, while the original only got 227,000; seen in 2015 in LA

The updated version of Love Story was played 144 times on the radio across 89 stations on February 12, compared to 67 plays that day for the original version.

That amounts to 777,000 audience impressions for Taylor’s Version, while the 2008 song only earned 227,000 impressions. 

The new single will chart separately from the 2008 version, as will the upcoming version of Fearless.

The two versions have been described as fairly similar, and Taylor even used the same musicians on her newest track as she did on the original, according to Pitchfork. 

This ensures that the same people who help craft the original recording will continue to be paid for their performances as people download and stream the new song. 

Love Story (Taylor’s Version): Taylor release her first re-recording from her first six albums on Friday, delighting fans with a revamp of her 2008 smash hit Love Story that features her touring band

Fearless is just the first of Taylor’s first six albums to be rereleased. 

The songstress’ new, more instrumental rendition of her 2008 smash hit Love Story was slightly tweaked in the title to include ‘Taylor’s Version’ and which quickly became the number one trending hashtag on Twitter.  

A fresh spin on the song that really put her career on the map — from her album Fearless — the updated title seems to be her way of letting the world know that she has regained ownership of her catalog after Scooter Braun sold her masters in November. 

 In control: Slightly tweaking the title to include ‘Taylor’s Version,’ was her way of letting her fans know that she was back in full control

A scrapbook style video to accompany the ‘new’ track, old photos of the singer throughout the early days of her career appeared next to the song lyrics. 

Previously teasing that some aspects of her re-recorded songs and albums would be different, fans were relieved to find that no lyrics to her high school Romeo and Juliet love ballad had been altered. 

Speaking about the slight differences her fan could expect to hear on the track she said: 

‘One fun thing about rerecording Love Story is that I really wanted my touring band to get a chance to play on this version because you know they spent a lot of years playing this song over and over again.’ 

Nostalgic: A scrapbook style video to accompany the ‘new’ track, old photos of the singer throughout the early days of her career appeared next to the song lyrics

Lyric change?: Fans were relieved to find that no lyrics to her high school Romeo and Juliet love ballad had been altered

 Old ties: ‘I really wanted my touring band to get a chance to play on this version because you know they spent a lot of years playing this song over and over again,’ she said 

 Swifties were out in full force upon the track’s release, as the hashtag #Taylorsversion became the number one trending item on Twitter. 

Alex Goldschmidt who became known as the guy Swift helped propose to his boyfriend in 2019 was quick to point out that she could now say ‘owned by Taylor Swift’ along…