Taylor Swift Announces Third Album, ‘Speak Now’

Taylor Swift will follow up her multiplatinum Fearless with a concept album titled Speak Now on October 25th. First single “Mine” will arrive on August 16th at Swift’s new SpeakNow13 website. “Each song is a different confession to a person,” Swift told fans in an online chat yesterday. “In the past two years, I’ve experienced a lot of things that I’ve been dying to write about. A lot of things I wanted to say in the moment that I didn’t.”

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According to Swift, Speak Now was written entirely without the help of co-writers — “It just so happened that the songs that made the cut on the album were the ones I wrote myself, so, wish me luck,” she said — and will once again be co-produced by Swift’s collaborator Nathan Campbell. Preorders for Speak Now will begin at the Speak Now 13 site on August 20th.

Swift has spent the past two years writing tracks for her follow-up to Fearless, which has sold nearly six million copies and won Album of the Year at the 52nd Grammy Awards, making Swift the youngest artist ever to win the prize. “Ever since we put out Fearless, we’ve been writing for this record and conceptualizing it,” Swift said. “I like to take a lot of time between records to work on the next one. I did the same thing for Fearless. I took two years between it, and for me, I write everything that I live. You have to give yourself a lot of time to live a lot.”

Swift recently shot a video for “Mine” in Portland, Maine, and told fans, “It’s a song that’s about my tendency to run from love. Every really direct example of love I’ve had in front of me has ended in goodbye and in breakups and things like that, so I’ve developed this pattern of running away when it comes time to fall in love and stay in a relationship and this song is about finding an exception to that and finding the person that makes you believe in love and realize that it can work out.” Swift didn’t say whether the track was inspired by her much-publicized relationship with Twilight star Taylor Lautner.

Swift didn’t offer up many details about potential Speak Now tracks, but she did reveal that the album will likely feature 14 songs, including some recorded with live strings and a full orchestra. And in what will be welcome news to the struggling concert industry, Swift promised fans she’d embark on a world tour in support of Speak Now.