Taylor Swift – “Mr. Perfectly Fine”

Taylor Swift – “Mr. Perfectly Fine”

At the end of this week Taylor Swift will release Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the first step in the process of re-recording her first six albums. She’s embarked upon this project to assert control over her catalog and devalue her old master recordings, which music mogul and manager Scooter Braun purchased from her former label Big Machine and then sold off to an investment fund. The album contains new recordings of the original tracklist, such as the smash hit “Love Story,” plus a bunch of “from the vault” bonus material, like the recent Maren Morris collab “You All Over Me,” a new version of an old song that never came out.

Today, two days before the album drops, Swift has shared another one of her shelved songs. It’s called “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” and like the rest of the Fearless material, she wrote it between ages 13 and 16. This one is an uptempo pop-country song about reeling from a breakup, with a hook that goes like this: “Hello, Mr. Perfectly Fine/ How’s your heart after breaking mine?/ Mr. always at the right place at the right time, baby/ Hello, Mr. Casually Cruel/ Mr. everything revolves around you/ I’ve been Miss Misery since your goodbye/ And you’re Mr. Perfectly Fine.” As the Swifties are pointing out today, it suggests that Swift held on to the phrase “casually cruel” for a few years before dropping it into fan favorite “All Too Well” from 2012’s Red.

This new recording was produced by Jack Antonoff, just as “You All Over Me” was produced by Aaron Dessner. That folklore/evermore team is staying busy. Hear “Mr. Perfectly Fine” below.

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is out 4/9 on Republic.

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