All Too Well Revisited: On Re-Reading Old Favorites
Revisiting our "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" episode, and musings on the art of the re-read
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This week’s episode: “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”
As part of our summer vacation series, we're re-airing one of our most requested episodes! This was the song we'd wanted to analyze since day one: "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)." This isn't just any song analysis—it's a literary deep dive worthy of Taylor's most devastating masterpiece. We're each bringing you a different academic lens to understand what makes this 10-minute epic the storytelling tour de force that has Swifties screaming every word. From narrative structure to nature imagery to the hypnotic power of repetition, discover why this song isn't just a breakup anthem—it's a work of art that rivals the greatest literary achievements.
🎧 Listen above and ⬇️ scroll below to read Jodi’s musings on revisiting old favorite books.
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📜 This Week’s Extra Credit by Jodi
It’s fitting that we decided to revisit our “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” episode this summer, as the song itself is a revisiting of an old work. How often is it that we take the time to look back on something and take a second look, a second read, a second listen? This podcast has given me the chance to revisit not just Taylor’s songs, breathing new life and fresh perspectives into decades-old songs that I’ve loved; it’s also been an opportunity to revisit books I read in high school, and look at these works with new eyes.
It’s particularly nostalgic to re-read high school and college texts using the same dog-eared, heavily annotated copies I’ve held onto all these years. Finally, justification for refusing to donate old books, instead lugging them across apartments, states, and storage units! Re-reading Pride and Prejudice, I saw my disdain for Darcy loud and clear through “what an asshole!” scrawled across the passage where he confesses his love for Elizabeth, then quickly confesses he separated Bingley from Jane. I knew then that Darcy’s confession of love was jarring and out of place, but I didn’t have the empathy of ever being in love to understand how hard and vulnerable it is to confess your feelings for someone. I found myself loudly LOLing as Nick Carraway, in The Great Gatsby, despairs “Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair,” a line I’m sure I thought nothing of—or perhaps agreed with—as I read it at the tender age of 16. The annotations and notes in the margins became a record of who I was then versus who I am now, making it all too clear how I’ve changed between readings.
I’ve rekindled my love for these novels through the podcast. On this new re-reading, I have the perspective of being older than Jane this time, feeling the deep frustration of a society that still expects women to get married and measure their worth according to their relationships. I’m now older than Dorian Gray, and the irony of re-reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray as I sit with a hydrating face mask on to combat the signs of aging is not lost on me. I had no idea what wrinkles and aging even was at the age of 16! I’ve carried these books with me for years. They’ve sat staring at me from my carefully color-coordinated bookshelf, books I hadn’t so much as touched since college despite loving my first read. But I probably wouldn’t have given them another chance otherwise, and I never would have discovered these new connections I have to old texts.
We’ve also revisited books and works that I didn’t love on first experience, famously Les Misérables, which Jenn and Maansi talk of lovingly quite often, and I still can’t get into. But then there’s (spoiler alert) next week’s episode on Frankenstein, where re-experiencing the Mary Shelley gothic novel, I found myself appreciating the darkness and social commentary way more than when I read it in 10th grade (and hated it). That’s not a book I ever would have picked up again had we not decided to use it as a topic for a Show and Tell episode, and I’m really glad I gave it another shot.
Revisiting old works of art isn’t just about nostalgia. We bring our own lived experiences to each novel, song, or artwork, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that re-reading a novel 20 years later, I’d see something new, or learn something different about a character or about myself. The book hasn’t changed, but I have, and so has the world around it. And that means there’s something new for me to discover in an old work.