Taylor Swift surprised fans with what appear to be revised lyrics to two songs on her 2017 album, Reputation, via Apple Music.
Eagle-eyed fans took to social media early Friday, December 12, after spotting lyric changes to “I Did Something Bad” and “Delicate,” after Apple updated all of Swift’s albums to Dolby Atmos sound.
On “I Did Something Bad,” the Grammy winner previously sang, “But if he drops my name, then I owe him nothin’ / And if he spends my change, then he had it comin’.”
The lyrics have now changed to, “If a man talks s***, then I owe him nothin’ / And if he calls me a bitch, then he had it coming.”
“Delicate” features a subtle lyric change, too, with Swift now singing, “Goddamn, never seen that color blue,” instead of, “Oh, damn, never seen that color blue.”
Swifties on social media quickly began speculating whether the updated lyrics may have been recorded for the long-anticipated “Taylor’s Version” of Reputation, which was initially released in November 2017. Others speculated whether the surprise Easter egg is teasing something bigger to come.
“My clown theory is that we’re getting Reputation vault tracks and originally written/unedited lyrics updated on album tracks,” one fan theorized on X. “Probably recorded with Max Martin and Shellback while working on TLOAS because Taylor Swift is a genius business woman artist queen?????”
Swift, 35, has released rerecorded versions of all her albums, dubbed “Taylor’s Version,” except Reputation and her self-titled debut album. She began rerecording her first six albums after her former record label, Big Machine, sold the masters to the records to a third party. (Swift regained control of her masters in May.)
Taylor Swift
“Full transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” Swift told fans in a letter shared via her website in May. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposefully misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief.”
She added, “To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music or photos or videos. So, I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for unreleased vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
The singer revealed in the same letter that she had rerecorded her debut album, however, was waiting to release it. (Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, in October.)
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“I’ve completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how that sounds now,” Swift wrote in May. “Those two albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about. But, if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”
Swifties rejoice — the six-part docuseries The End of an Era is finally releasing this month. Taylor Swift‘s much-anticipated documentary show about her Eras Tour is hitting streaming in just a few weeks, chronicling a behind-the-scenes look at the record-breaking tour that lasted from March 2023 through December 2024. Watch With Us couldn’t be more […]
Swift’s lyric changes also coincide with Friday’s release of her new Disney+ docuseries, The End of an Era, which follows the star behind the scenes on her record-breaking Eras Tour.
Swift also released a new concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Final Show, filmed in Vancouver in December 2024. A sequel to her 2023 theatrical release, The Eras Tour, the new film features Swift performing her revised Eras Tour set list after she dropped her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April 2024.
