As a big Taylor Swift fan and equally big fan of all-things nostalgia, I was pumped about the recent re-release and re-recording of her 2008 album Fearless. While the songs are almost a carbon-copy of the originals, the 2021 version features a smoother sound and much stronger vocals from the now-30 year old singer songwriter. If you’re not as big of a T. Swift fan as I am and you’re wondering why she’s re-recording all of her first six albums, let me break it down for you…
It all started in June 2019, when music manager Scooter Braun (who works with artists like Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, and Ariana Grande) acquired Taylor’s old recording company, Big Machine Label, and with it, the masters for Taylor’s first six albums. Masters are the original recording of songs. So, by owning those, Scooter owned Taylor’s music.
Taylor signed with Big Machine at 16 and when Taylor left Big Machine for Republic Records in 2018, she was forced to leave the masters of her first five albums behind. “I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in,” she said about the decision to leave Big Machine in a post on Tumblr. “I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, [the CEO of Big Machine] Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future.”
And while Taylor knew Scott was going to sell her masters when she left Big Machine, she said that never in her “worst nightmares” did she “imagine the buyer would be Scooter.” In the same Tumblr post, Taylor accused Scooter of “incessant, manipulative bullying,” citing her previous feud with Kanye West, who was Scooter’s client at the time.
The events caused a lot of drama, with musicians and celebrities taking sides in the feud. Many of Scooter’s artists like Justin and Demi defended him, while others, like Halsey and Katy Perry, took Taylor’s side. Scooter spoke out in November 2019 after he said he received many death threats over the situation, saying he “would like to find a resolution” with Taylor and he was open to talking. “It almost feels as if you have no interest in ever resolving the conflict,” he wrote in an Instagram post.
Taylor’s hope, it seems, is to override those archival works with these new versions. “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons,” she wrote in a March 2021 Instagram post. “But the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.” Her choice stirred up responses across the music world, and forced the public to take a long look at the music industry’s quiet corporate machinations.
Artists regularly chafe against their record label contracts; see Kanye West, who very publicly vented against his own contractual obligations just last year. But rarely do they go through the hassle of re-recording and re-releasing old work. Swift, though, is not the usual artist. She had time—a whole year of it, while the pandemic put her touring schedule on pause. And she is meticulous about how her work is consumed and perceived, from the aesthetics of her album covers to the comments she makes on Tumblr fan blogs. Given her unique position, platforms like Spotify have everything to gain by supporting her new versions. Meanwhile, the fans who are the most active streamers of her old music have become well aware of her intentions—and will abide by her wishes. Swift is in the rare position to want to upend the system and actually have the power to do so.
