Although my previous post touched upon one of the songs from RED (Taylor’s Version) – “All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)(Taylor’s Version)(From The Vault),” this album actually has a total of 30 songs including re-recorded versions of the 19 songs on the RED album in 2012, as well as 11 other “from the vault” songs. “From the Vault” songs are songs that Taylor originally wrote for the album in 2012, but did not end up making it onto the album when the final tracklist was being decided. Some of my favorite from the vault songs are: Babe, Nothing New, Message in a Bottle, I Bet You Think About Me, and The Very First Night. In this post, I will be talking about Nothing New. 

     Nothing New was one of the vault songs that I was really looking forward to listening to, even before the album was released, because Taylor had made an announcement stating that the song would be a collab featuring Phoebe Bridgers, and to quote Taylor herself, “If [Phoebe Bridgers] sings a song, I WILL be listening to it.” What I find really interesting about this song, and many of the vault songs in general, is that the lyrical style is far more complex than many of the songs on the original album. The lyrical style actually matches the style found in her album Evermore (another one of Taylor’s albums, released in 2020). As a singer coming out with her fourth studio album in 2012, Taylor felt like she was slowly becoming overlooked as an artist, and that people looked at her like she was “nothing new”. In an interview with Seth Meyers, Taylor explained this feeling by comparing it to someone being a “glittery new object” when you first meet them, and diminishes in novelty the following times you see them. Additionally, Taylor felt strongly that the point of view that she wrote the song from really captured how it felt like to be a female artist slowly dying in relevance, which is why she asked for Phoebe specifically to sing this song with her. Taylor has brought attention to this issue in many other interviews as well saying that almost all of the female artists she knows have had to reinvent themselves so many times throughout their career in such a way that their audience is not too taken aback by the transformation, but still finds them new and interesting enough, compared to their male counterparts. In the first verse of the song, Taylor exposes the double standards that are put on female artists in the industry,

“They tell you while you’re young

“Girls, go out and have your fun”

Then they hunt and slay the ones who actually do it

Criticize the way you fly when you’re soarin’ through the sky

Shoots you down and then they sigh, and say

“She looks like she’s been through it”

     It is no secret that Taylor, along with many female artists have been the subject of scrutiny to the media and the general population, the very people who put her on a pedestal when she first started her career. Through these lyrics, Taylor highlights how the same people who told her to “keep up the great work!” and praised her for her unique songwriting are now criticizing her “for the way she flies,” even though they first encouraged it. 

     The pre-chorus of the song consists of two simple lines of lyrics that build up to the core message of the song, “Lord, what will become of me/ Once I’ve lost my novelty?” I think this line echoes the fear that Taylor has even now of being a washed out entertainer who no one tolerates anymore. In her documentary “Miss Americana,” Taylor talks about how after she was snubbed at the Grammys for her album reputation, she thought her time as a recording artist was coming to an end, and that her album lover would be the last time society tolerated her success. 

     In the chorus of the song, Taylor says, “How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?/ And will you still want me when I’m nothing new?” I think these are her most vulnerable lines of the song because with just a single line Taylor has managed to put into words how her career has changed her. Additionally, this is also the first time Taylor explicitly voices her insecurity of not wanting to be someone who gets glossed over in a few years once she’s lost her novelty. 

     It wouldn’t be a Taylor Swift song without an amazing bridge, and this song has a bridge where Taylor manages to get even more vulnerable with her lyrics:

“I know someday I’m gonna meet her, it’s a fever dream

The kind of radiance you only have at 17

She’ll know the way, and then she’ll say she got the map from me

I’ll say I’m happy for her, then I’ll cry myself to sleep”

     I think this bridge really highlights the anxieties that Taylor has over maturing as a recording artist. I think it is really interesting how this part of the bridge has many similarities with another song from the album called “The Lucky One” where she talks about the same situation. In “The Lucky One”, she talks about young stars with their “name up in lights” popping up to take the place of older, more established artists. However, although she talks about how she wants to know when it’s her time to go without overstaying her welcome in “The Lucky One,” this song shows a more emotional side of the situation. Taylor knows that it is inevitable that an “ingénue” (a word that I learned from this song) will eventually show up, and drag away the attention from older artists such as herself, making her irrelevant.