After a public feud with music manager Scooter Braun, Taylor Swift says she plans to rerecord her masters.
In an excerpt of an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Swift confirmed her plans to correspondent Tracy Smith. And in a Good Morning America interview on Thursday morning, she told Robin Roberts her contract says she can rerecord in November 2020.
In late June, Ithaca and its owner Braun bought Big Machine Label Group, which houses Swift’s first six albums. Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that she learned about the purchase with the rest of America and was “grossed out” by it because she says Braun and his clients, like Justin Bieber and Kanye West, bullied her for years (West featured a naked Swift lookalike in his music video for “Famous” and Bieber mocked her on Instagram after West released a tape of Swift agreeing to the lyrics in “Famous”).
Scott Borchetta, Big Machine CEO and the man who has been credited for “discovering” Swift, fought back days later when he released his own statement saying Swift had the opportunity to buy her work. Swift seemed to have implied that wasn’t true when she took the stage at the Amazon Prime Concert and shouted the lyrics “the liars and the dirty, dirty cheats in the world” during her song “Shake It Off.”
@taylorswift13 just a thought, U should go in & re-record all the songs that U don’t own the masters on exactly how U did them but put brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions. I’d buy all of the new versions just to prove a point
— Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) July 13, 2019
Fans and even fellow musicians have encouraged Swift to re-record her own masters and by doing it, it seems Swift hopes to make her original work worthless so Braun can’t make any money off her work.
Swift has liked several Tumblr posts from fans who are happy she’s taking this next step.
TMZ notes that there are a few hurdles Swift must overcome in order to achieve her plan. Most contracts have clauses about rerecording songs—like they can’t record it on another label or by themselves and they have to sound different than the original recordings. Even if those clauses have an expiration date, Swift might put more money in Braun’s pocket. When Prince went through the same debacle, his original recordings became more valuable.
RELATED: Please, for The Love of God, Break Down the Taylor Swift-Scooter Braun Drama for Me
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The post Taylor Swift Is Going to Rerecord Her Masters to Make Her Actual Masters Worthless appeared first on Los Angeles Magazine.