Why is Taylor Swift re-recording her albums?
Last Updated: 24.06.2025 10:49
Hope it’s clear enough! It wasn’t a great time for her and being her fan in 2016–17 was HORRIBLE.
Another peace of context: Taylor’s feud with Kanye west and his ex wife, Kim Kardashian.
The man who helped two other men (Kanye and Justin Bieber) to bully her and harass her for years.
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this part is EXTREMELY important because it’s the central point of this whole situation
Easy, Scooter Brown purchased Big Machine Records in 2019, meaning that HE was the owner of her masters now.
So, moral of the story is: to regain control over her art, work and rights to her old music without purchasing the OG masters back, Taylor is re-recording her 6 albums.
Under this label Taylor recorded six albums: Taylor Swift (her debut album), Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation.
Last but not least, we should mention the support she received from Kelly Clarkson in 2019. She suggested Taylor to re-record her music:
“To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…’ They clearly spoke so I let you all see that. Nobody ever denied the word ‘b----’ was used without her permission.”
As we all know (if you don’t, I’m telling you now), in 2009 the first (infamous) episode happened: Taylor was giving her speech after winning her MTV Video Music Award (she was nineteen that time) and Kanye West grabbed the mic out of her hands, interrupting her speech, declaring that Beyoncé should’ve won that award and not Taylor.
He said that Taylor gave him permission to use those lyrics and that she was okay with it. Also, he and his (ex) wife Kim Kardashian decided to “leak” a Snapchat video recording in which Taylor could allegedly be heard on the phone approving the lyrics.
she’s happy now, we’re happy and her re-recordings (to me) are better than the OGs.
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After the extended video was released, Kim Kardashian decided to tweet:
All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years, like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.
Taylor wrote all her songs, so she kept the copyright in the music and the lyrics. This gave her the rights to use those elements of her OG songs to recreate the song and a new master, where she now owns the copyright’s entirely.
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Another funny things was that in 2019, both Scooter Brown and Scott Borchetta blocked her from performing a medley of her hits at the American Music Awards, where she was honoured with the Artist of the Decade award.
In Miss Americana (Taylor’s documentary) there’s a piece of interview about that night and she was shocked and really hurt by what he did. She was looking at him as an idol “it’s Kanye West you know” and she thought he was there to compliment her, instead he ruined her speech.
They called her “liar”, “snake” (her IG and Twitter was flooded by snake emojis and all kind of insults).
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That day she heard the audience booing at him but she thought they were booing at her, she was really devastated.
After that, she returned to the scene with her brand new album (my favourite) “Reputation”. This was a huge comeback but this is not the right post to talk about it.
Back to the main topic: why is she re-recording her old albums?
After that both Brown and Bieber tried to rewrite the history by making numerous post and interviews about Taylor “not wanting to sit in the same table with Scooter to talk about her masters”, accusing her of lying and misleading the narrative (bullshit).
I have recently begun re-recording my older music and it has already proven to be both exciting and creatively fulfilling […] I have plenty of surprises in store. I want to thank you guys for supporting me through this ongoing saga, and I can't wait for you to hear what I've been dreaming up.
In another post we can also discuss how impactful it was for artists the moment Taylor decided to remove ALL HER CATALOG from Spotify and what really changed after that. If artists now can earn from streams more, is only because of her.
About the legal implications of this decision:
I think it’s time to explain why she’s re-recording her old albums and why this is a very important and relevant part of her career.
Guess who was Kanye’s manager that time? Exactly, Scooter Brown.
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Anyway, after that the things between the two were pretty normal if it wasn’t for Kanye that decided to make an entire song about Taylor sexualising her in his 2016 song “Famous”:
After this whole situation Taylor was forced to close all her social media accounts, she disappeared for an entire year and she fled to England because she wasn’t safe in the US due to the shitstorm she was facing.
There was one condition that meant more to me than any other deal point: ensuring that profits from the future sale of Spotify shares would be returned to artists.
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After the acquisition she posted this on Tumblr (2019):
In 2020, Scooter Brown sold her masters to a private equity company. After that, Taylor announced her plans of re-recording her old albums.
Unfunny thing was that she learned about her catalog being sold to Scooter Brown when it was announced publicly. They never let her know about that and they never let her have a chance to buy her OWN records and rights.
Liar.
P.S. the M/V is still up there and it’s the most disgusting and pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.
Apparently this wasn’t enough for him and later he dropped the M/V of this crazy song that featured a naked mannequin made to look like Taylor Swift in bed with Kanye West.
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And she was also able to do that because the OGs are still there. You can still listen and buy the original versions of her music.
Of course those were just lies and a cropped video, in fact in 2020 the extended version of the video was leaked that revealed Taylor was never informed about the lyric, nor was she told about the music video content.
I made that bitch famous, I made that bitch famous
This label was owned by Scott Borchetta and the deal with Taylor was that Big Machine Records had the ownership over Taylor’s master recordings (they owned the original recordings of each song or performance).
In another post she said:
For new fans the difference between the OG and the re-recordings might be something irrelevant and I know for sure that some people don’t even know what happened in Taylor’s career that lead her to take this particular decision.
What’s the difference between the OG?
Is it enough? Not yet, but what she did was a huge help and success for artists.
Obviously this whole situation sparked and he was call out for it. And here’s started all the lies he told the media.
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 on Twitter)
So Lover, folklore, evermore, Midnights and The tortured poets department are all owned exclusively by Taylor and Taylor only. Fearless (Taylor's Version), Speak Now (TV), Red (TV) and 1989 (TV) are also owned by her now.
Yes. In 2018 she switched to Republic Records and Universal Music Group and she negotiated to own the master rights to ALL the music she creates going forward. This includes, of course, the re-recordings.
[…] He (Borchetta) knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.
For context, Taylor signed her first contract with Big Machine Records in 2005, at only 15 years.
Does she owns her music now even if there’s no written “Taylor’s Version”?
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 (Taylor on Instagram in 2021)
Her mature voice, production updates and the meaning of these re-recordings.
I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex…
For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work […] Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.