PSA: Taylor Swift sang an acoustic version of “All Too Well” at her Tiny Desk Concert
Although we’re still listening to Lover on repeat and are totally on board with pastel, butterfly-clad Taylor Swift, we’ll always have a soft spot for Red-era Tay. Circa 2012, T. Swift was rocking a red lip and strumming her acoustic guitar, and this week, she brought the old Taylor back by singing one of her most beloved ballads, “All Too Well,” during her NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
October 15th marked Taylor Swift’s debut performance on the NPR series, and we have to say, she brought everything a Tiny Desk Concert needs to the table (er, desk.)
The four-song performance was intimate—just Taylor, her guitar, a piano, and a killer pantsuit. Swift divulged details about what inspired each song she chose to sing before drifting off into soft piano or guitar notes and giving us her trademark smirk.
"I decided to take this as an opportunity to show you guys how the songs sounded when I first wrote them," Swift said. On Lover, she said, "It's one of those albums where I wrote everything on one instrument first. So it's really fun to pick songs to do acoustically because they all started out that way."
During her half-hour-long acoustic performance, Swift performed “Lover,” “The Man,” “Death by a Thousand Cuts” (an underrated Lover track), and the heartbreaker of all heartbreakers, “All Too Well.”
Since the release of “All Too Well” in 2012, Tay has gifted us with tragic ballads on every following album—we got “This Love” on 1989, “New Year’s Day” on Reputation, and “Cornelia Street”on Lover.
But nothing has quite ripped us to shreds like “All Too Well.” You could say it leaves us feeling like a crumpled up piece of paper.
While introducing the last song of her Tiny Desk Concert, Taylor revealed that she initially didn’t think “All Too Well” would receive the overwhelming praise that it has.
“There’s one song that I’m particularly proud of," she said, "because when the Red album came out, there was this one song on the album and I’m like ‘I’m the only one who likes this song this much, because it’s only happened to me and it’s personal. No one is going to like 'All Too Well' as much.'"
Um, let’s just say she was wrong. Any true Swiftie knows that “All Too Well” is Tay’s masterpiece and the one song we’ll never stop singing at the top of our lungs alone in the car. Okay, that’s a lie—there are many other T. Swift jams we’ll never stop singing. However, none leave us feeling quite as nostalgic and heartbroken as “All Too Well.”
Watch Taylor Swift’s full NPR Tiny Desk Concert below, and make sure to have tissues on hand for the last song.
We’ll be watching this at least 10 more times today.
