Professor Brandon Polite '03 to Publish Anthology ft. Taylor Swift... Are You Ready for it?

For many years, Chair & Professor of Philosophy Brandon Polite ’03 has been intrigued by philosophical puzzles raised by the phenomenon of renowned artists such as Ozzy Osborne and Def Leppard recording near-duplicate versions of their famous albums or hit songs. When he was offered the opportunity to write a short essay for Bloomsbury's Contemporary Aesthetics in 2021, Polite decided to write specifically about the first of six albums that Taylor Swift set out to re-record after the sale of her former record label to her nemesis, Scooter Braun. However, as Polite was writing his 3000-word essay on Fearless (Taylor’s Version), he realized that there was a great deal more that ought to be said about Swift’s project. 

Polite decided to interview some of the authors he cited in his paper and a few others about Swift’s re-recordings for his YouTube series, Polite Conversations: Philosophers Discussing Art, where he talks to other philosophers who work in aesthetics about their work.  Afterward, he had a realization: “You know what? This is a book,’” he said to himself. This was the moment when Taylor Swift and the Philosophy of Re-recording: The Art of Taylor's Versions was conceived. After nearly two years of research, writing, and editing, the essay collection was published in January of 2025 in both hardcover and paperback and as an e-book by Bloomsbury.

To compile the book’s content, Polite reached out to his interviewees from his Taylor Swift miniseries and asked them to write a chapter for the book, assembling his “dream team” of contributors. The authors delve into the ethics of copyright and recording contracts, the nature of recorded and re-recorded music, and how we can understand and generally appreciate Swift’s project and musical re-recordings. 

“It was a delight working with all of the contributors,” Polite said. “ I selected them because I knew they would generate really good work. And all of them exceeded my already high expectations. The chapters they produced are all absolutely fantastic.”

Polite says it was not easy deciding the sequence of the chapters.  Because of this, writing the end of the introduction was a challenge. “The introduction to the book sets the stage and explains its overarching narrative,” he explained. “The last few pages of the intro took weeks of just banging my head on the table as I tried to get the story the book is trying to tell in just the right shape.” 

Polite is excited to see his first book in classrooms across the world. But he also aims to reach a wide audience of Taylor Swift fans to help cultivate their interest in philosophy. For Polite, it’s a way to get Taylor Swift fans, and popular music fans in general, to dig deeper into the metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic, and social-political issues that philosophers have been grappling with for generations.  “That's one huge value of having someone like Taylor Swift out there doing amazing, philosophically interesting work that most people are familiar with,” he explained. “By the very nature of her work, she is helping us to disseminate philosophical ideas and ways of thinking to the widest possible audience.”