On April 9, 2021, when “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” dropped, Swifties everywhere were overcome with nostalgia. We were given seven months to recover from the earth-shaking throwback to 2008 when we would scream “Fifteen” and “Love Story” into our pillows, crying over a love that could have been.
“Red (Taylor’s Version)” was released on November 12, 2021. The album has become Taylor Swift’s 10th number one album on the Billboard 200 charts. The number one single on the track is the heart-wrenching “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” which extends the original six-minute track.
Taylor’s Version also includes six additional songs “From The Vault.” According to PopSugar, songs from the vault were written at the same time as the other songs on the album but were not originally included.
For the most part, Taylor’s Versions are the same as the original albums. They maintain her unconventional take on country music with a modern pop sound. The main difference that fans have noticed is her deeper voice and less noticeable country accent. “The music has a different tone to it because she’s no longer 16 and her voice has matured,” said Lilly Varon ’23.
After the first and second re-records, Swift’s fans wanted all of Swift’s albums re-released. What more could we ask for than another version of our favorite albums?
Swift’s plan is to rerecord and rerelease all of her first six master albums. By re-recording them, Swift can regain control of her old songs.
In 2005, when Swift began her career as just a 16-year-old teenager, she signed to Big Machine Records. Big Machine produced her first six albums. Master albums are the original recordings. Thus, by contract, Big Machine owned the masters of these albums: “Taylor Swift,” “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989,” and “Reputation.”
photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The owner of the master album reaps the profits whenever its contents are bought or streamed. The artist is typically paid “10-15% of suggested album retail minus packaging costs,” as stated by Recording Connection, an audio institute.
According to Vox Media, Swift had tried to buy back her masters in 2020, but Big Machine refused and offered her a deal. They would trade her the rights to one of the old masters for each new album she turned over to them. Swift decided to turn down this deal and switch labels for future releases. She signed with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records, negotiating a contract in which she had more control over her music and owned her own future masters.
Swift owns the masters to her subsequent albums: “Lover,” “Folklore,” “Evermore,” “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” and “Red (Taylor’s Version).” Her discography includes nine albums, thus the six she does not own account for more than half of her released music.
Swift wrote in an Instagram post to the CEO of Big Machine Records, Scott Borchetta, who had initially expressed faith in Swift as an artist. The post read: “Loyalty is a contractual concept. When that man says, ‘Music has value,’ he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.”
After Swift left Big Machine, Big Machine was sold to a private-equity group called Ithaca Holdings for $300 million, which thus gained control of Swift’s master albums, then valued at $140 million. Ithaca Holdings was owned by the renowned music manager Scooter Braun — someone Swift has a strong dislike for. In 2019, Braun sold her masters to another company, Shamrock Holdings, for a reported $300 million, according to TIME magazine.
After Braun bought the six albums, his friend, David Grutman posted on his Instagram story, “WHEN YOUR FRIEND BUYS TAYLOR SWIFT.” Suggesting that Braun owns Swift, Braun reposted it on his story but took it down later.
“When I originally left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually, he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter,” Swift posted on Instagram, publicizing her situation on June 30, 2019.
According to Swift, Braun was an “incessant, manipulative bully” who tried to “dismantle” her music career and Borchetta was aware of Braun’s intentions.
In 2019, Swift tweeted that Borchetta and Braun blocked her from performing her older songs at the American Music Awards when she won Artist of the Decade. They claimed it would be considered a rerecording of her master and therefore not permitted in the contract.
Kanye West and Justin Bieber, who are managed by Braun, also piled on to also bully Swift.
Since 2009, when Kanye West famously interrupted her MTV music awards acceptance speech, their relationship has been rocky. As Taylor accepted her Best Female Video award for You Belong With Me Kanye interjected, “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!”
The tension simmered until 2016 when West released the song, “Famous,” which included vulgar lyrics about Swift. Swift claimed never to have approved the song lyrics. However, a phone call between West and Swift that Swift called, “illegally recorded,” was later leaked, in which she gave permission for the lines. The music video for this song includes a fake version of Swift naked in bed with West. Swift called this, “revenge porn from Braun’s client.”
Not long after this scandal, Justin Bieber posted a photo on Instagram on a FaceTime call with West and Braun. The caption was “Taylor what up.” Swift reposted this picture, circled Braun’s face and publicly slammed him for bullying her for years.
It is suspected that Swift was inspired to rerecord her albums by Kelly Clarkson’s post on Twitter. Clarkson suggested Swift rerecord her albums with “some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions” and ensured that she would, “buy all of the new versions just to prove a point.”
Swift was strongly supported by celebrities like Halsey, who tweeted in 2019 that Swift has been an inspiration to her and Swift “deserves to own the painstaking labor of her heart.” She noted that “no matter how much power or success a woman has in this life, you are still susceptible to someone coming along and making you feel powerless out of spite.”
Swift, a brilliant businesswoman, figured out a way to circumvent the terms of the contract signed in 2005 that gave others control over her album masters — rerelease them with small changes and a new title. By rerecording these albums, profits from streams sales and licensing of her songs will go to her.
Isabella Murphy ’23 has grown up with Taylor Swift as a powerful figure in her life. “Other artists experience the same thing — they don’t own their own music. She is creating change in the music industry by making people more aware of artists’ control, or lack of control over their music,” Murphy said.
With her rerecorded albums being released, her fanbase will devalue her original albums because Swift’s fans are aware of her intentions. Murphy said that with Taylor’s Versions being released, “It’s important that fans support her. The music industry is not completely fair and people have taken advantage of her talent. She is taking control of her own work which shows how powerful she is as an artist and an influence, and hopefully the unfair dynamic for artists in the music industry changes.”
