McKenna Lambert

Taylor Swift has become one of the most successful artists of our generation, with winning Album of the Year at the Grammys three times, being only the fourth person and first woman to do so, and releasing her first album at age 16. As her music career took off she signed with Big Machine Records in 2005. Her contract with them expired in 2018 with six albums released during this time. Once her contract was up she switched to Universal’s Republic Records, but Big Machine still owned all the masters, or original recordings, of her six albums, which is normal for recording deals. After Swift switched labels, she made sure to have ownership over all her future music and made a very detailed contract with the label that made it clear she owns her future music, which is a great step for successful artists. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the owner of the private equity group Itcha Holdings, Scooter Braun, bought the entirety of Big Machine Records, which included Swift’s six albums. Braun then sold Swift’s masters for $300 million to another company, Shamrock Holdings, in 2019. Swift was outraged about this. She claims that Braun “has repeatedly bullied her” and was upset that her music was being sold around without her knowledge. This news was on headlines everywhere and caused a lot of furious “Swifties”. She then publicly announced that she would start the process of re-recording her first six albums so that she could have control over her music. She is hoping that once she releases a re-recorded album, listeners will stop listening to her original one and choose to listen to the re-recorded album instead. Anytime a user streams or buys Swift’s original music the profits are still going to Braun. However, Swift is not doing this for the money or business aspect of it. She wrote in an Instagram post in March of 2021, that “artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.” 

There is not much of a difference between Swift’s original and re-recorded music. While her voice has changed a little and the instrumentals may seem slightly different, it can be hard to tell if you are listening to an original or new song if you cannot see the title of the song! On every song title it now has (Taylor’s Version) included on the end of it. She has also promised to put unreleased songs on each of the albums. These are called songs from the “Vault”. These songs are ones that she wrote during the time she was writing that specific album that unfortunately did not make the cut for the original album. For example, on Fearless (Taylor’s Version) she released the song “Mr. Perfectly Fine” and on Red (Taylor’s Version) she released “All Too Well” (10 minute Version), which were both from the “Vault” since they were not able to be on the original Fearless or Red albums. These “Vault” songs excite the fans because it is as if they are getting new music from Swift even though they were written years ago. 

Swift has already released Fearless (Taylor’s Version) on April 9, 2021, just released Red (Taylor’s Version) on November 12, 2021, and the rest of the albums are soon to come. She is thrilled to be re-recording her music and has said “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” to Scooter Braun.