Taylor Swift’s Re-Recordings Explained
By Sonia Chajet Wides (‘21)
Taylor Swift’s folklore and its sister album evermore were heralded as two of the best albums of 2020, best-yet continuations of all of Taylor’s strengths. The albums are extraordinary on their own. But viewing them in the context of Taylor’s entire discography-- her lyrical motifs, storytelling style, and musical flourishes-- makes them all the more meaningful.
Viewing folklore and evermore in context is a convenient thing to do as Taylor prepares to release the re-recordings of her first six albums. For those unfamiliar with the ups and downs of Taylor’s career in the past couple of years, the re-recordings may seem confusing-- why re-record and re-release old music with little to no changes? In reality, the re-recordings are Taylor’s reclamation of her life’s work.
For her first six albums, Taylor was with a record label called Big Machine Records, one that she had signed to when she was 15. Scott Borchetta, the CEO of Big Machine, was a trusted mentor and confidante in Taylor’s early career. Being a young musician at the dawn of her career in 2006, Taylor’s initial contract with Big Machine entailed that they would own her masters. These are original recordings of all of her music under their label, and it is a common contract clause in the music industry. In 2018, Taylor announced that she was leaving Big Machine and signing with Universal Music Group. Under her new contract with UMG, Taylor would own her own master recordings moving forward. Big Machine still owned the masters of her first six albums.
In July 2019, it was announced that Scooter Braun’s company, Ithaca Holdings, had bought Big Machine Label Group. Scooter Braun is a giant in the music industry, best known as the manager who represents Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, and many others. Braun’s purchase meant that he now owned Big Machine’s back catalog, valued at $300 million, and including Taylor’s masters.
When the acquisition went public, Taylor posted on her personal Tumblr account. In her post, she revealed that for years, she had desired to own the original recordings of her work. Big Machine offered her the opportunity to renew her contract with them and “‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in.” Because she knew that the label would likely be sold and thus this situation would be in uncertain territory, Taylor instead made the “excruciating choice” to leave Big Machine.
Taylor said that she learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of Big Machine at the same time the rest of the world did. “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years,” she wrote, identifying as examples Braun’s endorsement of Kim Kardashian’s leaking of an illegally recorded phone call with Taylor, his negative social media posts targeted towards her, and his involvement with his then-client Kanye West’s “Famous” video, which portrayed Taylor’s nude likeness. “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,” she wrote, “Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
A large part of Taylor’s upset about the sale was the betrayal she felt on the part of Scott Borchetta, whom she had trusted with her masters. She assumed he would sell them to someone but not to Braun. She wrote that Borchetta had been a witness to Taylor’s fraught relationship with Braun, and that “[Borchetta] knew what he was doing” handing over the rights to her work to him.
Distanced, Taylor wrote of her music that “its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.” Her post established her frustration with the sale, and also her passion for artists owning their own work.
It turned out that Braun’s ownership would cause problems-- one example of this was in November 2019, when Taylor alleged that Borchetta and Braun were forbidding her from performing her old music in an Artist of the Decade medley at the American Music Awards or in her Netflix documentary Miss Americana, and that they would allow Taylor to use the music only if she agreed to not re-record her music and stay silent on Borchetta and Braun’s decisions. “The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished,” she wrote. In the end, after much public outcry, Taylor was able to use her old music in both the performance and the documentary.
In November 2020, it was announced that Braun had sold Taylor’s masters to a small firm called Shamrock Holdings. When this happened, Taylor released a statement explaining that she had been attempting in the past year to regain ownership of her masters by simply buying them back from Big Machine/Braun. According to Taylor, Braun was insisting that she sign a strict NDA “stating that I could never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive” before she could even begin to look at the financial details of bidding on her own work. “He would never even quote my team a price,” Taylor wrote, “These master recordings were not for sale to me.”
Shamrock Holdings reached out to Taylor to alert her of the sale after it was finalized-- the second time her music had been sold without her knowledge. They explained that the deal required that they make no contact with Taylor nor her team. In her statement, Taylor posted the letter that she wrote to Shamrock Holdings. “It pains me very deeply to remain separated from the music I spent over a decade creating, but this is a sacrifice I will have to make in order to keep Scooter Braun out of my life,” she wrote, in an explanation of why she felt she could not partner with them after finding out that Braun would continue to receive financial rewards from her previous albums, their videos, and their artwork.
This all brings us to the re-recordings. Taylor will be re-recording and releasing her first six albums: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and reputation. The reason that Taylor is able to re-record even though Big Machine owns her masters is that they only own the masters original recordings, but not the publishing rights. This means that after a certain amount of time (which has now elapsed), Taylor can re-record the instrumentals and vocals and release them without violating any contracts. Taylor’s stance on re-recordings has been that they are an opportunity for her to: a) own her own music again and regain “the sense of pride I once had when hearing songs from my first six albums,” as she wrote in her letter to Shamrock Holdings; b) financially benefit from her first six albums, as the release of the re-recordings has been predicted to decrease the value of the original albums; c) lend her more mature vocals as a 31 year-old to songs she recorded when she was a teenager.
For devoted fans of Taylor’s the re-recordings will be “guilt-free” versions of the old music; for some, they will be updated classics but not replacements. The way you choose to listen is up to you! They are intended to be re-recordings, not re-vampings, but as we heard from the small changes made on “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” they won’t be without distinction. In my opinion, the most exciting part of the re-records is hearing Taylor’s adult voice on some of her older songs. Most of all, they will allow us all to take a well-needed look back at her brilliant journey as a songwriter and artist.