Shortly after Taylor Swift’s unreleased song “Dark Blue Tennessee” was uploaded onto YouTube, more and more of Swift’s older songs leaked to the public. Fans took both sides of an ongoing debate: Should people protect the privacy of Swift’s unleaked songs or share them for others to hear? Some argued that Swift wished to keep her songs private, while others believed her songs should be heard. While the debate continued, people started to “trade” songs; fans exchanged songs they want from each other in order to hear them. As a result, more and more people became involved in the trading business, and their trading lists accumulated with the mushrooming number of leaked songs. Before long, these lists contained up to hundreds of unreleased songs.
Amist all the excitement, conflict arose. People known as “scammers,” or those who would claim to have songs they did not have, would allow their trading partners to send their songs first so that they would be the only to benefit from their trade. The same problem in the aforementioned debate sparked controversy in the trading business. Some wanted to prohibit the process of trading because it increased the popularity of protected songs that Swift wished to keep private. In the end, advocates of the sharing of songs prevailed. After all, no evidence suggested that Swift did not prefer to have her unreleased music shared to the public. A fan once asked her about her unpublished songs, to which she replied, “I don’t think there’s much I can do. The songs are out there now, but I hope that people are saying nice things.” This response indicated that she had not been deeply affected by the whole sharing business.
Swift’s most wanted unreleased song has been an uncirculated song named “Nashville.” A friend she personally knew had listened to all of her unreleased songs and considered “Nashville” to be his favorite. This song remains protected by SONY, but hopefully, it may someday be released. The song that sparked the most controversy was named “Gracie,” a song dedicated to a cancer patient (Gracie). What fans feared most was the protection of Gracie’s family’s names, which were included in the lyrics. The commotion eventually dwindled down after people realized there was no way of preventing the song from spreading.
Nowadays, many of the beginning songs exchanged are easy to access; it is the later ones that are harder to find. As for now, there are still some gems to be unearthed. Since no recent uncirculated songs have been found, any future songs to be discovered will be very special. If and when the next one comes, there will surely be thousands of fans scrambling to hear it!
List of Swift’s unreleased songs and their descriptions
Buzzfeed list of their favorite unreleased songs from Taylor