Taylor Swift’s “Red” Prologues: Original Vs. Taylor’s Version (Full Text)

Taylor Swift’s album prologues are so helpful in understanding the meaning of her lyrics, but are even more insightful when compared on their own, side by side.

Here’s the original Red Prologue, compared side-by-side with the Red Taylor’s Version Prologue.

After you read the full text of each, I’ll compare and contrast the major themes and takeaways to see what we can learn about the art, the artist, and Taylor’s changing views on life and love.

Red Prologue Full Text: Original (2012)  

“There’s an old poem by Neruda that I’ve always been captivated by, and one of the lines in it has stuck with me ever since the first time I read it. It says “love is so short, forgetting is so long.” It’s a line I’ve related to in my saddest moments, when I needed to know someone else had felt that exact same way. And when we’re trying to move on, the moments we always go back to aren’t the mundane ones. They are the moments you saw sparks that weren’t really there, felt stars aligning without having any proof, saw your future before it happened, and then saw it slip away without any warning. These are moments of newfound hope, extreme joy, intense passion, wishful thinking, and in some cases, the unthinkable letdown. And in my mind, every one of these memories looks the same to me. I see all of these moments in bright, burning, red.

My experiences in love have taught me difficult lessons, especially my experiences with crazy love. The red relationships. The ones that went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and exploded. And it was awful. And ridiculous. And desperate. And thrilling. And when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in head first without looking. And there’s something to be learned from waiting all day for a train that’s never coming. And there’s something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it. But this album is about the other kinds of love that I’ve recently fallen in and out of. Love that was treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic. but most of all, this record is about love that was red.

LOVE IS A RUTHLESS GAME UNLESS YOU PLAY IT GOOD AND RIGHT 

Taylor”

-Taylor Swift, Red Prologue (Original Version, 2012)

Red Taylor’s Version Prologue (Full Text, 2021)

“I’ve always said that the world is a different place for the heartbroken. It moves on a different axis, at a different speed. Time skips backwards and forwards fleetingly. The heartbroken might go through thousands of micro-emotions a day trying to figure out how to get through it without picking up the phone to hear that old familiar voice. In the land of heartbreak, moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion are intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness. Imagining your future might always take you on a detour back to the past. And this is all to say, that this is my version of Red. 

Musically and lyrically, Red resembled a heartbroken person. It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past. Like trying on pieces of a new life, went into the studio and experimented with different sounds and collaborators. And I’m not sure if it was pouring my thoughts into this album, hearing thousands of your voices sing the lyrics back to me in passionate solidarity, or if it was simply time, but something was healed along the way.

Sometimes you need to talk it over (over and over and over) for it to ever really be… over. Like your friend who calls you in the middle of the night going on and on about their ex, I just couldn’t stop writing.

This will be the first time you hear all 30 songs that were meant to go on Red. And hey, one of them is even ten minutes long.

Sincerely, 

Taylor “

-Taylor Swift, Red Taylor’s Version Prologue (2021)

Comparing the Red Prologues

Both of these prologues give context to the album that follows. But so much has changed in Taylor’s life and career in between these two records, that it’s important to look at what’s changed, and what hasn’t. 

Here are the major themes and references within the prologues, how they illuminate one another, and the central message conveyed in both.

🧣Do you really know Red? Try the Red TV Lyrics Quiz! 🧣

On The Meaning of “Red”

Original: “These are moments of newfound hope, extreme joy, intense passion, wishful thinking, and in some cases, the unthinkable letdown. And in my mind, every one of these memories looks the same to me. I see all of these moments in bright, burning, red.”

TV: “In the land of heartbreak, moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion are intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness.”

In the original prologue, “red” is used to describe the theme and tone of the album. She sets up her “colors of love”, and explains to the reader that “red” means intense emotions, whether good or bad. 

In Taylor’s Version, she explains how her perspective on the “red” emotions has changed. They’re not just emotions at one end of the spectrum or the other; they’re woven together to create the “red” experience. 

‘Heartbreak, strength, independence and rebellion’ are “intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness.” You can’t have one without the other: to experience something intense means you experience everything in between, also.

That’s what this album – and this color – means to today’s Taylor: red is the entire experience of love, and the entire experience of heartbreak.

She’ll go on to expand and clarify her definition of “red” in later songs, including scarlet letters (New Romantics, Slut!, et al), maroon stains on her soul (Maroon, Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, et al), bloodstains of trauma (cardigan, The Great War), and the fires of passion that can burn or burn it all down (ivy, peace, et al). 

On The “Why” of the Album 

Original: “But this album is about the other kinds of love that I’ve recently fallen in and out of. Love that was treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic. but most of all, this record is about love that was red.”

TV: “Musically and lyrically, Red resembled a heartbroken person. It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past.”

The original prologue primes us to expect an album about heartbreak. She tells us that the album that follows will be about love that was “treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic.” She’s writing these songs to convey her “red” emotions of love. 

2021 Taylor tells us that “Red,” the original version, “resembled a heartbroken person,” because that’s what she was at the time she wrote the original album. 

Now that she can look back with clarity, she sees the album not just for what it was, but for what she was at the time: “a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end.” 

Like her album, she was “all over the place,” because that’s exactly where you are when you’re 22 years old. She was “happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past.” 

The original Red wasn’t just about love that was red, it was about Taylor’s red period of life. 

On Neruda & Inspiration

Original: “[The poem] says “love is so short, forgetting is so long.” It’s a line I’ve related to in my saddest moments, when I needed to know someone else had felt that exact same way.”

TV: “Like your friend who calls you in the middle of the night going on and on about their ex, I just couldn’t stop writing.”

The Pablo Neruda poem that Taylor quotes in the original prologue is entitled, “Tonight I can Write.” It describes the author working through losing love, and using writing to try to move on. 

He can write “the saddest lines”, and hopes that – after “tonight” – they will be the last lines dedicated to his lost lover. Of course they won’t be, but he hopes he can use writing to move forward.

2021 Taylor looks back and sees that Red album was her “saddest lines,” that she wrote “to know someone else had felt the exact same way.” 

She wrote the album “like your friend who calls you in the middle of the night going on and on about their ex.” She may have been inspired by crazy love, but the album was a product of reaching out.

Red was reaching out for sympathy, for empathy, for connection, and to help herself process her grief. 

On Memory 

Original: “And when we’re trying to move on, the moments we always go back to aren’t the mundane ones.”

TV: “Imagining your future might always take you on a detour back to the past.”

2012 Taylor pours through her memories – both good and bad – in her attempt to “move on.” But the kinds of memories that flicker through her mind are the “red” memories of “stars aligning,” “newfound hope, extreme joy, intense passion, wishful thinking,” and “the unthinkable letdown.” 

2021 Taylor can see that these memories, forever memorialized in the Red’s songs, were a “detour back to the past.” It’s a detour that’s always necessary to take, because you can’t see where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. 

Today, Taylor sees “red” memories as a helpful guide, to steer you in the right direction, and to try to avoid “the unthinkable letdown.”

And, most importantly, re-recording this album allowed her to complete the process all over again, to reassess and realign her direction. Both versions of Red tidied up the filing cabinet of her mind, helping to put things in order and get rid of unnecessary clutter.

On Regret & Moving On

Original: “And when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in head first without looking.”

TV: “Sometimes you need to talk it over (over and over and over) for it to ever really be… over.”

2012 Taylor looks back at her “red” relationships – and “red” breakups – and asks herself if she would take it back. She wouldn’t, she explains, because you can’t have the passionate “red” moments without the sad “red” moments. 

She may not want to take back this red era of emotions, but she did need “to talk it over (over and over and over)” to move on. And it seems that the re-record process finally allowed her to truly move on, put all those “red” relationships in the past, and close this chapter of her life and career. 

Today, the dust has truly settled, and she can appreciate this period for what it was: life-altering discovery, experimentation, and big lessons.

On Healing 

Original: “There’s something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust.”

TV: “I’m not sure if it was pouring my thoughts into this album, hearing thousands of your voices sing the lyrics back to me in passionate solidarity, or if it was simply time, but something was healed along the way.”

The Neruda poem in the original prologue clued us in to the fact that Taylor has always used writing to help her process her emotions. 

White writing the original Red, she was able to move on, “realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust.” (This is, coincidentally, the first time Taylor uses gold to describe true love, as she’ll later use in Daylight, Invisible String, and more) 

The process of re-recording the album allowed a similar emotional release. She doesn’t know if it was because of “pouring my thoughts into this album,” hearing the fan reactions, “or if it was simply time” that allowed this release, “but something was healed along the way.” 

Red described some of the biggest heartbreaks, letdowns, and tumultuous periods of Taylor’s emotional life. Now that she’s re-recorded it all, and more – she can finally heal every last scar. 

She healed herself, all by herself.

“Love is so short, and forgetting is so long,” but in re-recording her most emotional album to date, she’s one step closer to forgetting. 

Red Prologues: Final Thoughts

So many songs and albums all point back to Red: this was the formative moment that helped create the Taylor we know today.

We rarely get to peek behind the scenes of a prolific artist’s inner thoughts, but Taylor’s prologues allow us to do exactly that. In writing them, she not only gives context to the albums, but gives us context as to what was really going on in her life at the time.

It’s like when your favorite movie or book series comes out with a prequel, and you get so much more information that helps you understand the entire series.

The original Red Taylor was really in the thick of it, and at 22 years old, couldn’t’ see the forest through the trees. But 2021 Taylor can see it all and more, and narrates how her career and songwriting has evolved ever since.

These memories and stories contained within Red will color (forgive the pun!) everything else that is to come.

🧣Do you really know Red? Try the Red TV Lyrics Quiz! 🧣

More Album Prologues 

• Debut Album Prologue
• Fearless & Fearless TV Prologues
• Speak Now & Speak Now TV Prologues
• 1989 & 1989 TV Prologues

Lyrical Analysis of Songs From Red (Taylor’s Version) 

• State of Grace
• Red
• Treacherous
• I Knew You Were Trouble
• All Too Well [10 Minute Version]
• 22
• I Almost Do
• We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
• Stay Stay Stay
• The Last Time
• Holy Ground
• Sad Beautiful Tragic
• The Lucky One
• Everything Has Changed
• Starlight
• Begin Again
• The Moment I Knew
• Come Back…Be Here
• Girl at Home
• Better Man [From the Vault] 
• Nothing New [From the Vault] 
• Babe [From the Vault] 
• Message in a Bottle [From the Vault] 
• I Bet You Think About Me [From the Vault] 
• Forever Winter [From the Vault] 
• Run [From the Vault] 
• The Very First Night [From the Vault]