Taylor Swift ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ Vault Tracks Review: Key Co-Stars Include Hayley Williams, Fall Out Boy and… Grandmother Marjorie
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Sorry, Hayley Williams and Fall Out Boy: Marjorie has stolen the show again.
Not that Taylor Swift’s beloved grandmother actually puts in a vocal appearance from the great beyond, as she did on the “Evermore” album three years ago.
But Marjorie Finlay still manages to be a dominative force in the Vault Tracks for the newly released “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” by having her photos appear throughout the lyric video for the closing track, “Timeless,” and having her relationship with Taylor’s granddad be a focus of the inspirational ballad.
Twenty-first-century pop-punk or emo can hardly compete with that emotional a capper. But for those less sentimentally inclined, Paramore’s singer and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump will be way up there in what Swift fans immediately take away from the six previously unheard compositions that have been appended to the previous 16-track running order of 2010’s “Speak Now.” The duet with Williams, “Castles Crumbling,” is particularly pungent, as a lament that just about could have been an outtake from the more recent “Folklore” or “Evermore” instead of an album that came out a full decade before those.
Read more on variety.com