Taylor Swift Says She’s ”Collecting Infinity Stones” With Rerecorded Songs

Taylor Swift is adding "Thanos" to her laundry list of achievements. 

The pop superstar was being interviewed about being TIME's Person of the Year (2023), and she got onto the subject of re-recording her old albums with new 'Taylor Versions' which Swift owns in their entirety (as opposed to the record label). The next re-release album will be Swift's version of Reputation, the fifth album that she's re-releasing, following "Taylor's Versions" of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989. When talking about what it feels like at this point to be re-recording albums, Swift described it as having become a full-fledged obsessive quest, much like Thanos' quest to obtain all six Infinity Stones of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

"I'm collecting horcruxes," Taylor Swift told TIME, referencing Harry Potter. "I'm collecting infinity stones. Gandalf's voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now."

We realize that the Venn diagram for those who are fans of Taylor Swift AND Thanos is probably pretty thin, so just in case it needs explanation: 

In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos the Mad Titan finally got off the bench and actively started a smash-and-grab campaign across the galaxy, to collect the Infinity Stones (Power, Space, Reality, Soul, Time and Mind). Thanos killed and maimed his way to to his goal with a level of fervor and obsession seldom seen – but in the end he was victorious. After exterminating half of all life in the galaxy, Thanos "retired" to his garden on a distant planet, quietly exclaiming that his work was done. 

So, when Taylor Swift references Thanos in describing how she views her re-recordings, what she's really saying is that like Thanos she is currently feeling the unrelenting drive to get all of her previous albums re-recorded with Taylor Versions – and she's not showing any signs of stopping before her work is done. 

Taylor Swift has earned the right to be called TIME's Person of the Year. In 2023, Taylor had no less than three hit albums. Midnights (which was released in Fall 2022 and was still charting) was followed by the re-releases of Speak Now in July and 1989 in October. Taylor didn't miss out on a second of that momentum, spinning her rapid-fire release of albums into a record-setting tour called "The Eras Tour." The tour revisited Taylor's nearly two-decade career, and sold out major stadium venues across the US, becoming the biggest thing in entertainment over the summer. Swift then took that tour success and changed the entire landscape of the industry by adapting the tour into a box office-smashing concert film. 

So: while Thanos may have had a plan to reshape the universe, Taylor Swift is re-shaping it, owning it, and making bank in the process. No Marvel villain has achieved that much.