Sophia Henry | A&E Editor
It’s obvious to note that the original isn’t as powerful as the ten-minute version, especially with a breath-taking film attached, but the original is still important to examine because it still has important pieces.
“All Too Well” the ten-minute version, is the original version, however, she needed to dial it down to fit it onto an album which then created the 2012 version on her album Red, but she decided to re-record it this year because she wanted her own rights to it. Swift kept essential elements like how her love interest never gave back her scarf and allowed her listeners to share the moment of them driving upstate as autumn leaves are dancing around them. Throughout the song the lyrics create a theme of a beautiful memory with a stagnant sad feeling. She sings “And I know its long gone and that magic’s not here no more/And I might be okay but I’m not fine at all.” In this short but sweet song you feel her pain, her heart crumbling and how bad the memory stings.
Now the ten-minute version, with the film, is an absolute masterpiece. The audience follows a young couple “him” and “her” played by Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. Their acting is magnetic as we see them drive upstate and kiss in the forest, but what makes this version even better is how we see the complications too. We see them fight and fall back in love and fight again.
This film is organized in different sections starting with “the first crack in the glass” which preludes to their first fight, to “Are you real?” with them falling back in love again, and then “The remembering” which is post break-up and the audience watching “her” in pain and trying to act okay. The film ends with Taylor Swift acting as “her” and reading a book called “All Too Well” to an audience as it states “Thirteen years gone” so time has passed.
This film really helps fans connect with Swift on a whole new level, with the emotional acting, the fighting, the intimacy, it's almost hard to believe this relationship only lasted three months.
The ten-minute version also allowed for deep-rooted lyrics that made this song so much more powerful like “He’s gonna say it’s love, you never called it what it was/’Til we were dead and gone and buried” and “And then you wondered where it went to as I reached for you/But all I felt was shame and you held my lifeless frame.” Another strong lyric is “And there we were again when nobody had to know/You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath” which shows how they viewed each other.
Overall, an absolute powerhouse that shows the true meaning of what this song is truly about.