Taylor Swift Removes Fearless (Taylor’s Version) From Grammy & CMA Consideration
Taylor Swift won her first of three Album Of The Year Grammys for Fearless, her 2008 sophomore LP, which also took top honors at the CMA Awards. This past spring, with much fanfare, she released a re-recorded version of the album with lots of bonus material in an attempt to assert control over her catalog and devalue her original masters. Fortunately, she is making sure there is no chance the Grammys and CMAs will try to award her for Fearless all over again.
“After careful consideration, Taylor Swift will not be submitting Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in any category at this year’s upcoming Grammy and CMA Awards,” a rep for Republic Records tells Billboard. “Fearless has already won four Grammys including album of the year, as well as the CMA Award for album of the year in 2009/2010 and remains the most awarded country album of all time.”
Swift will, however submit last December’s evermore for awards consideration. It’s the sister album to last summer’s folklore, which earned Swift her third AOTY trophy at this year’s Grammys. (Her other AOTY win was for 2014’s 1989.) It seems she does not want to split her votes by putting her new music in direct competition with her old music.
Swift’s re-recorded version of 2012’s Red is out in November. Unlike Fearless, Red did not win Album Of The Year at the Grammys; it was nominated but lost to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. If she doesn’t release any more new albums in the September 2021-August 2022 eligibility window, it will be interesting to see how she approaches award season with a remake of an album that didn’t already win Album Of The Year.