“All Too Well”—the 10-minute version, written years before but recorded only for Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021—is Taylor Swift’s masterpiece, in the first, now obsolescent sense of masterpiece : the single work that demonstrates how a young creator (sculptor, painter, composer, etc.) has mastered the whole of her art. When I asked the students in my course “Taylor Swift and Her World” to nominate the single song that summed up her gifts, they seemed to agree. Most of her radio hits, beginning at “Our Song,” received multiple nominations. But “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” proved the runaway winner, with more than 30 votes. (The runners-up got 15 and 14, respectively.) For her verbal powers, there’s no better place to dig in.

The 10-minute version—which Swift clearly wrote in 2012

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