John Evanishyn
Reporter
Taylor Swift will not be fooled twice. In June of 2019, the record company Big Machine Label Group was sold by company founder Scott Borchetta to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings company. With this sale went everything Taylor Swift, who had been in contract with Big Machine since 2006. There went Taylor Swift’s first six albums, along with music videos and album art, into the hands of another. In this first sale of her career’s work, Swift was given the chance to ‘earn’ back the rights to her albums one-by-one if she renewed her contract with Big Machine. Swift refused and signed onto Universal Music Group, producing her seventh (Lover-2019), eighth (Folklore-2020) and ninth (evermore-2020)) studio albums through them.
Though changing record labels allowed Swift to negotiate the contract to give her the rights to all her future work, she had not escaped the headache of her previous record label. In October of 2020, Scooter Braun sold the master recordings to all of Swift’s first sixth albums to an investment company, Shamrock Holdings for an estimated $300 million. Before this quietly executed sale, Swift’s legal team worked to secure the rights to her work from the man named Scooter. Braun’s team however insisted that for Swift to even enter the negotiation stages she would have to sign away her right to ever speak negatively of Braun. Swift didn’t consider the deal.
Instead, she has taken on the challenge of re-recording the first five of her albums, Taylor’s Version. Her 2017 album, Reputation, is not yet up for re-recording, as common clauses in contracts do not permit re-recording until a general five years after the commercial release. So we can expect Taylor’s version of Reputation to be underway in 2022. But in the meantime, she’s got five albums to keep her busy.
Taylor’s starting with her second studio album, Fearless, which will hit streaming platforms on April 9, 2021. Already, we have gotten the chance to hear her new version of “Love Story”, along with some tracks never before released, “You All Over Me” and “Mr. Perfectly Fine.”
Through Instagram, Taylor shared, “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.” With that, Taylor is adding six “From the Vault” tracks, which she had tried to get on the original Fearless. Plus Elvira’s “Love Story” remix.
This is an exciting time for both Taylor and her fans. And the trek of remaking six albums all for the sake of owning what’s yours is inspiring. It isn’t often that we see something that needs change and there’s someone in a position of power to bring that change about.
