It’s Too Late to “Never Grow Up”
When the album that defined my childhood is re-recorded and re-released nearly thirteen years later…
I was nine years old the first time I heard the album Speak Now by Taylor Swift.
After spotting the album’s official release date in a packet advertising my elementary school’s annual book fair, I circled the photo of Speak Now ten times in red marker and began to count down the days until October 25, 2010.
When the day finally came, I begged my mom to drive me to Target after a long, hard day of fourth grade. Still in the era of physical CDs, my hands were itching to get themselves ahold of a precious copy.
Mom, my sister, and I listened to Speak Now the entire fifteen-minute drive home. Then we listened to it for the rest of the night. Then the rest of the week. Then the rest of the year.
Honestly, I think the songs on Speak Now echoed throughout our home more often than they didn’t in those formative years of my life.
The funny thing about music is that it helps to cement moments in your mind that otherwise may have been easily forgotten — like how every time I hear “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by Scorpions, I think of learning to play guitar with my dad, or how every time I hear any song from the album Sit Still, Look Pretty by The Wreckers I think of scrubbing bathroom sinks and vacuuming hallway floors with my mom.
So even though Speak Now was on a steady rotation nearly every day back then, I had no idea that it would become the album that defined and preserved some of the most tangible memories of my childhood.
Metaphorically speaking, I would say that my earliest years are captured inside of the Speak Now album. And I don’t mean captured as in trapped — I mean captured as in caught, held, understood.
Speak Now isn’t a cage withholding my memories. It’s a time capsule.
So imagine my child-like excitement on May 5th, 2023, when I watched Taylor Swift announce the release date of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) from an Instagram livestream of her Era’s Tour performance in Nashville.
Rather than circling an ad in a Book Fair advertisement in my fourth-grade classroom, this time, I learned of the album’s re-release date in my dorm room during my senior year of college.
Oh, how time flies.
“This album just means so much to me…”
I tried to explain later on the phone to my boyfriend, who I hung up with the second I saw the livestream begin.
“I have so many memories and feelings attached to it. Anticipating the release of Speak Now back in 2010… It’s the first time I can ever remember being truly excited, truly passionate about something. And I’m about to feel that all over again.”
And I did. I felt like a little kid as the days inched closer and closer to the re-record’s release date. There’s just something so special about experiencing an album release as a child and then getting to experience the same album’s re-release thirteen years later.
And just as I suspected, listening to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) for the first time doused my heart in warmth, comfort, and nostalgia.
Here’s a small glimpse into my trip down music-induced memory lane:
Track 1: “Mine”
The second I press play, I’m back at the breakfast table in my childhood friend’s kitchen in the year 2010. Kenna’s mom stands behind the counter cooking grits and bacon while we chat and hum along to 97.5, the local country station.
Songs like Lady Antebellum’s “American Honey” and “Why Don’t We Just Dance” by Josh Turner flit in and out of our focus until something unfamiliar catches our attention.
“It’s Taylor Swift’s new song!”
Kenna exclaims, her mom already reaching to turn up the volume.
They know how much I love Taylor Swift and want to ensure I don’t miss this moment. My heart races with excitement as I listen to Speak Now’s lead single for the very first time.
Later that night, when my mom takes me home, I sneak up to my room and glue myself to the radio for hours. I lean forward in anticipation at the end of every song, hoping that the next one they’ll play will be “Mine.”
They don’t play it again for the rest of the night.
But I will try again tomorrow.
Track 6: “Mean”
I’m running up the stairs and away from my sister’s antagonizing taunts. I slam the door and lock it behind me as I wipe away the burning tears of frustration sliding down my face.
I kneel on the floor in front of the stereo that Santa/Mom gave me for Christmas and queue up the sixth song on Speak Now, “Mean.”
I turn up the volume as loud as it can go, ensuring that the lyric,
“Someday I’ll be big enough that you can’t hit me / and all you’re ever gonna be is mean,”
will reach every corner of that two-story house.
It was my own unique way of announcing to my mom and sister that they had made me angry. And they made me angry a lot.
We laugh about it now, but that stereo and its impressive capacity to project sound would soon become a gift my mom regretted purchasing.
Track 9: “Enchanted”
There is no sound more romantic or bewitching than the muted guitar strums and Swift’s breathy vocals at the beginning of this track. Every time I hear this song, I am transported to some mental fairytale in a far-off land.
But this song also takes me back to the less romantic feeling of my bedroom carpet imprinting itself into my forearms after hours of lying on the floor inches away from my precious stereo.
I lay on my stomach and mindlessly sing along as I doodle in my notepad, write stories, or simply flip through the lyric booklet for Speak Now.
Even though I have all of the lyrics to “Enchanted” memorized, something in me just likes to look at the words anyway.
“There I was again tonight, forcing laughter, faking smiles / same old tired lonely place / Walls of insincerity, shifting eyes in vacancy / vanished when I saw your face / All I can say is it was enchanting to meet you.”
Admiring Swift’s lyricism and atmospheric storytelling in “Enchanted” is the first time I can clearly remember appreciating language's beauty. That same fascination with words would one day earn me a degree in English and a passion for writing.
To this day it is still one of my favorite songs of all time.
There are fourteen songs on the standard version of the original Speak Now album, but I have countless memories tied to them all. The list, as they say, could truly go on and on and on.
But one song on the re-recorded album felt different this time around. It felt like everything — the good, the bad, and the soul-crushing — all at once.
To put it gently, the re-recorded version of “Never Grow Up” absolutely wrecked me. Maybe it’s because, unlike the others, this song doesn’t only stir up pleasant memories of the past.
This song also stirs up unwanted realities of the present.
“Never Grow Up” begins from the point of view of an eighteen- to twenty-year-old Swift as she gazes down upon a peaceful, sleeping infant. Swift looks at the child and is overcome with the desire to preserve its innocence and shelter it from the horrors of this cruel world.
“To you, everything’s funny / You’ve got nothing to regret / I’d give all I had, honey / if you could stay like that.”
The next verse shifts focus to an unnamed fourteen-year-old whom Swift urges not to let themselves get caught up in appearances and the social politics of coolness. Even though they may want to grow up, Swift reminds them to cling to their youthful zest for life for as long as possible.
“You’re in the car on the way to the movies / and you’re mortified your mom’s dropping you off / At fourteen there’s just so much you can’t do / and you can’t wait to move out someday and call your own shots / But don’t make her drop you off around the block / Remember that she’s getting older, too / And don’t lose the way that you dance around in your PJs getting ready for school.”
But as the song progresses and transitions to the bridge, it suddenly becomes clear that maybe Swift wasn’t singing to a nameless infant or teenager after all — maybe she was singing to her younger self the entire time.
“Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room / Memorize what it sounded like when your dad gets home / Remember the footsteps, remember the words said / and all your little brother’s favorite songs / I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone.”
At nine years old, the words escaping the speakers felt like they were coming from a protective older sister. The lyrics felt like twenty-year-old Taylor Swift herself was draping a protective blanket around my tiny shoulders with a warm, all-knowing smile.
At nine years old, fourteen felt like a lifetime away. The lyrics of this song felt like something to keep in mind but not something to think too much about.
But now I’m no longer nine years old — I’m freshly twenty-two. And as I listened to the re-recorded version of “Never Grow Up” for the first time, I was made painfully aware of the thirteen years that have come and gone since Speak Now’s original release.
“So here I am in my new apartment / in a big city, they just dropped me off / It’s so much colder than I thought it would be / … Wish I’d never grown up.”
Time stilled as that line forced me to snap out of memory lane and into my present-day surroundings.
When I listened to “Never Grow Up” for the first time in 2010, I was in the car with my mom on the way home from elementary school. But when I listened to “Never Grow Up (Taylor’s Version)” for the first time in 2023, I was sitting in the living room of my new apartment in a big city seven hours away from home in the light of a single, flickering candle. And though nobody “dropped me off” per se, my mom did come to visit, and she had just left two days ago.
The pain in Swift’s voice as she directs the lyrics to her younger self is now reflected in my own as I try but fail to sing along. My voice shakes, and my eyes flood as I realize that Taylor Swift is no longer the one singing these words of wisdom and warning to nine-year-old me.
I’m the one singing to nine-year-old me.
In a blink of an eye, nine turned to fourteen, fourteen turned to eighteen, and eighteen turned to twenty-two. Fourth grade turned into sixth grade; high school turned into college. South Carolina turned into Washington, D.C., and the little girl who used to write stories while listening to Speak Now turned into the young woman who is listening to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) while writing this.
All this growing up is everything I’ve ever wanted, and yet…
Sometimes, I wish I could turn back time.
And in a way, this album did that for me.
Ever since the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), I’ve never felt more connected to my nine-year-old self because all those childhood memories are being repackaged, resurfaced, and re-experienced as this album is presented to me anew.
There’s just something so heart-achingly sad and beautiful about looking back to the youngest, most hopeful, and innocent version of myself and knowing what will happen to her. Of knowing I can’t stop it. Of knowing she’ll get through it all anyway.
Even though we are two completely different people, that little girl is still inside me. She is me.
It’s too late to heed Taylor’s warnings at twenty-two years old. It’s too late to “Never Grow Up.”
In many ways, I never will. But in most ways, I already have.
