Shake It Off (Taylor's Version)
Taylor Swift
How to study this song
“Shake It Off (Taylor's Version)” carries 22 English words, 6 adjectives and 27 verb forms — 55 study entries in all, graded A1+. Work through the glossary first: brain, people and dates are the words you will lean on most. This one leans on its verbs: 27 distinct forms against 6 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| brain | cerebro | cervello | cerveau | cérebro | hersenen | Gehirn |
| people | gente | gente | gens | pessoas | mensen | Leute |
| dates | citas | appuntamenti | rendez-vous | encontros | afspraakjes | Dates |
| music | música | musica | musique | música |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 22
- Adjectives
- 6
- Word combos
- 18
- Expressions
- 15
- Verb forms
- 31
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Shake It Off (Taylor's Version)» is the 2023 re-recording of one of the best-known pop hits of the 2010s. Taylor Swift first released «Shake It Off» on 18 August 2014 as the lead single of «1989», the album with which she left country music behind and turned fully to pop. Nine years later she recorded it again for «1989 (Taylor's Version)», released by Republic Records on 27 October 2023, exactly nine years after the original album. The new version follows the original almost note for note and has the same length, three minutes and thirty-nine seconds.
Why record a famous song a second time? In 2019 the label Big Machine, which had released her first six albums, was sold, and the master recordings of those albums passed to the new owners, a group linked to the music manager Scooter Braun. Swift protested publicly and announced that she would make new recordings of all six albums, so that she would own the masters of her own catalogue. The versions marked «Taylor's Version» are the result of that plan. She announced the re-recorded «1989» on 9 August 2023, during the last Los Angeles concert of her Eras Tour.
The song was written by Swift with the Swedish producers Max Martin and Shellback, who also produced the 2014 recording. For the new version, Wikipedia credits the production to Swift and Christopher Rowe, the engineer who worked with her on most of the re-recordings. The arrangement is the same: hand claps, a strong drum line, a brass riff and a cheerleader-style chant in the middle. Shellback later explained that the famous horn sound started almost as a joke, when he began to play something deliberately silly in the studio.
The lyric is about criticism and gossip. The narrator lists what other people say about her: that she goes out too much, that she dates too many people, that she has nothing in her head. Instead of arguing, she decides to keep dancing and to let the comments fall away. The chorus builds on short, repeated phrases about people who simply act according to their nature, and it ends with the image of shaking the bad feelings off like water. In a spoken section, she tells the listener that, while some people worry about liars and cheats, they could be dancing instead. Even an awkward moment with a former boyfriend becomes a reason to laugh and move on.
Swift has said that the song came from years of being watched and judged by the media. She explained that you can let that attention break you, or you can become good at avoiding the blows. She compared it with «Mean», a 2011 song in which she answered a critic in a more hurt tone, and described «Shake It Off» as a more active and humorous reply. That attitude is one of the reasons why the song became a kind of anthem for people who feel judged.