Swift's live rendition at the Country Music Association Awards, featuring Alison Krauss and Vince Gill on background vocals, was released on November 8, 2013.

When it was first released, initial critical reception was mixed: some reviews deemed the production experimental and successful in combining country and pop, but some others found it inconsistent or underwhelming.

[1] Swift initially continued working with Chapman in her career base of Nashville, Tennessee, until her "started wandering to all the places [she] could go" while she was writing "Red", the title track.

[4] Scott Borchetta, the president of Swift's then-label Big Machine Records, overheard Chapman's production and suggested a pop-oriented sound.

[8] The arrangement features signifiers of country music that had characterized Swift's previous songs, such as a slight twang in her vocals and acoustic instruments including banjo, guitars, and fiddles.

[8][9] Its pop refrain[10][11] includes electronic vocal manipulation where Swift sings the title "r-r-red"[12] and rock guitars and string orchestration,[4][8] resulting in an upbeat and lively sound.

[4] The refrains relate the different stages of this fallen relationship to different colors:[9] the breakup itself is blue, the pining for the ex-lover is dark gray, and the passionate love itself is red.

[4] The verses explore both the positive and negative aspects of love: connecting to somebody special feels like effortlessly memorizing every lyric of a favorite song,[4] but it can also get out of control like "driving a new Maserati down a dead end street" and "trying to change your mind once you're already flying through the free fall".

[8][17] Jon Dolan from Rolling Stone compared Swift's "stark-relief emotional mapping" on "Red" to the songwriting of Carole King and Joni Mitchell.

[22][23] By November 2017, "Red" had sold two million digital copies in the US[24] The single was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in July 2018.

[35] Swift performed "Red" for the first time at BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards, held at Wembley Arena on October 7, 2012, in London.

[36] On October 15, 2012, Swift performed "Red" as part of her concert for VH1 Storytellers, held at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

[8] In a lukewarm review, Entertainment Weekly's Grady Smith wrote the lyrics "paint a rather blurry portrait" of the intense emotions Swift meant to express.

Jonathan Keefe from Slant Magazine and Randall Roberts from the Los Angeles Times commented that the underwhelming and occasionally clumsy metaphors of "Red" were subpar for Swift's lyrical abilities.

[17] Jordan Sargent, in a 2017 retrospective review of Red, called the title track "perhaps the album's best pop song since Swift flirts with Fleetwood Mac".

"[60] Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone compared the pop/Eurodisco crossover to the music of Shania Twain and the "color-tripping lyric" to the songwriting of Prince, calling "Red" a representation of "this century's most ridiculously masterful megapop manifesto".