WASHINGTON — Taylor Swift fans have a lot to be happy about this St. Patrick's Day. In honor of her upcoming "Eras" tour, the singer just dropped four previously unreleased tracks in a surprise midnight post.
Well, sort of unreleased.
The four songs were labeled as "Eras" bonus songs, not tied to any particular album.
But three of the tracks, "Eyes Open," "Safe & Sound" and "If This Was A Movie" have all been on versions of albums before. Specifically, they were all on the pre-"Taylor's version" of various albums.
Taylor's version albums are the re-recorded masters — the final mixed tracks — of Swift's first six albums. They were produced after a public feud with music manager Scooter Braun, who at the time owned the original masters versions of every album before Lovers (which released in 2019).
"Eyes Open" and "Safe & Sound" were both part of the Hunger Games soundtrack, while "If This Was A Movie" was originally released on Speak Now, her third album.
But these new versions (each labeled as "Taylor's version") feature updated vocals and backing music similar to the other re-released songs Swift has done.
The last song in the midnight release is "All Of The Girls You Loved Before," a completely new song that may have been cut from Lover before that album's release.
Earlier this month, AOTGYLB was leaked online.
All four songs could make an appearance on the Eras Tour, which begins Friday in Glendale, Arizona. For the upcoming tour, she plans to play tracks from throughout her nearly 20-year career as a singer, including tracks from albums she hasn't been able to sing live before.
The COVID-19 pandemic scrapped any chances of a tour for the four albums she's released since 2019: Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights.
The Eras tour has already caused chaos for Swifties, with a disastrous pre-sale through Ticketmaster preventing many from getting tickets and forcing Ticketmaster to cancel the promised general sale after they sold out of tickets early.
The move incited a firestorm of outrage from fans. Swift herself said the ordeal “really pisses me off.”
The fiasco even got the attention of Washington, with the Justice Department reportedly probing Ticketmaster's parent company in the wake of the ordeal and politicians on Capitol Hill demanding answers.