Electric Touch (song)
"Electric Touch"[note 1] is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift featuring the American band Fall Out Boy. Swift wrote the song and intended it for her 2010 studio album, Speak Now, but left it out of the track-list. She produced it with Aaron Dessner for her 2023 re-recorded album, Speak Now (Taylor's Version).
"Electric Touch"
"Electric Touch" is a pop-punk and pop rock song driven by dynamic drums, electric guitar riffs, and vocals from Swift and Fall Out Boy's lead singer Patrick Stump. The lyrics are about the anxieties, excitement, and self-doubt from a newfound love. Most critics gave positive reviews to "Electric Touch", praising the production and the vocal chemistry between Swift and Stump, while others perceived it negatively. The song peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Global 200 and entered charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States.
Background[edit]
After signing a new contract with Republic Records, Swift began re-recording her first six studio albums in November 2020.[2] The decision followed a public 2019 dispute between Swift and the talent manager Scooter Braun, who acquired Big Machine Records, including the masters of Swift's albums which the label had released.[3][4] By re-recording the albums, Swift had full ownership of the new masters, which enabled her to control the licensing of her songs for commercial use and therefore substituted the Big Machine–owned masters.[5] In 2021, Swift released two re-recorded albums of her earlier releases: Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version); each album also featured several unreleased "From the Vault" tracks that she had written but left out of the original albums' track listings.[6]
On May 5, 2023, at the first Nashville date of her sixth concert tour, the Eras Tour, Swift announced Speak Now (Taylor's Version) as her third re-recorded album; it is the re-recording of her third studio album, Speak Now (2010).[7] She shared on social media that the original album was "a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing [...] and living to speak about it" that covered "brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions and wild wistfulness".[8][9] On June 5, 2023, Swift announced the track-list of Speak Now (Taylor's Version), which consists six "From the Vault" songs were intended for but left out of Speak Now's 2010 track listing.[10] One of them is "Electric Touch", which features the American rock band Fall Out Boy, one of the songwriting influences for Swift when she was conceiving the 2010 album.[11]
Release[edit]
Speak Now (Taylor's Version) was released on July 7, 2023, by Republic Records; "Electric Touch" is the 17th song on the album.[24] The song peaked at number 35 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 16 on Hot Country Songs, where it became Fall Out Boy's first entry.[25][26][27] Elsewhere, it charted in the Philippines (22),[28] New Zealand (35),[29] Australia (38),[30] Canada (46),[31] and it peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Global 200.[32]
Critical reception[edit]
Rachel R. Carroll of PopMatters commended Swift's ability to "turn a small, fleeting moment into a cinematic showstopper".[16] Mark Sutherland from Rolling Stone UK wrote that Fall Out Boy raises the song to "soaring pop-punk status".[14] Bobby Olivier of Spin compared "Electric Touch" to other duet "Castles Crumbling" with Hayley Williams of Paramore, and opined that the former is more upbeat and called it a "fun and hooky, four-on-the-floor guitar jam — exactly the sort of pop-rock banger missed amid the digital thumps of Midnights".[21] Laura Shapes of The Guardian described "Electric Touch" as a "rueful stadium chugger", and considered it a "good bit of revisionist history, rightly honouring Speak Now as emo canon".[33]
In Uproxx, Danielle Chelosky lauded Swift and Stump for their musical chemistry and "impressive, mesmerizing" vocals.[34] Rolling Stone journalist Maura Johnston described the song as a "shimmering four minute pop gem", and wrote that Swift and Stump work "pleasantly" together.[22] In a less positive review, Willman found the song to be the least interesting "From the Vault" track compositionally, and said that "it lacks any of the truly great, peculiar lines that mark a Swift song as unmistakably hers".[17] Kate Solomon from the i considered it "extremely mediocre".[35]