Why is Taylor Swift re-recording her albums?

For context, Taylor signed her first contract with Big Machine Records in 2005, at only 15 years.

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.

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.

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What’s the difference between the OG?

P.S. the M/V is still up there and it’s the most disgusting and pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.

Her mature voice, production updates and the meaning of these re-recordings.

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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.

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.

this part is EXTREMELY important because it’s the central point of this whole situation

My grandmother deeded me her house before she passed last year. Her son still lives there refusing to move. What steps should I take to have him removed?

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)

In another post she said:

[…] 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.

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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.

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”:

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)

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Under this label Taylor recorded six albums: Taylor Swift (her debut album), Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation.

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).

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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she’s happy now, we’re happy and her re-recordings (to me) are better than the OGs.

I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex…

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.

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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).

Liar.

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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.

“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.”

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.

Hello,hope y'all doin good, i came to Quora to share my strange story , a very weird one , a story when luck smiled at me ,maybe u will enjoy it , let's begin,have fun... A year ago ,I was a real porn addicted(btw I was 18) ,but never had sex before, I don't have a gf I didn't try to find one even ,always thinking to go to find a sex worker but then I just don't , everyday watching different bodies getting fucked and everyday enjoying. One day, I was watching porn, a big ass lady with big boobs ,just after seeing her the image of my female cousin poped in my mind, (let's introduce her : she's 35 years old , very big ass , nice boobs ,not very big but nice,always wearing tight clothes , she's divorced ) and I thought of me fucking her ,I never had sexual desires for her but now I do days went by and when I met her I was so horny ,I couldn't stay with the family cz my penis was clearly erected , I realized this is my first time I get horny for one of my family ,it not illegal in my country.well to make a long story short( if u want details just text me I will tell u 😊),I decided to give her signs that I want to fuck her,finally I decided to have sex and with my cousin , I thought it is the best beggining for me, i started touching her when I came across her in a narrow place , make her feel my hard cock when we hug , I thought it will hard and I will be ashamed but no , I felt nothing and she said nothing , probably she thought it was by mistake,anyways, I decided then to talk with her about sex, waited for her to be alone in a room and talk with her, I confessed everything about me watching porn and addicted..etc,she said it's normal and u are growing up and u must have sex,well at that time I was like whaaat????? Well I didn't control myself and asked her for sex ( horny like I Ve never been before) she said that she will think Abt it ,2 weeka went by then she called me ,telling that she reserved a room in a hotel and we meet tonight ,we met,and bruuhh, sex is great , I mean, I had to find a pirstitue ,what I was waiting for to have such a feeling ????, I will never forget that night, I started kissing her she was kissing hard ,she misses sex so bad , she sucked my dick and swallowed my semen ,I felt I'm in a dream , then when fucked ,her ass was very big and the anus was open ,didn't struggle to get my hard cock inside it , she was obviously missing sex , she was shouting ,fuck me yh fuck me , I go fast after every word until I cum , we did that 3 times , then we went to her pussy , using condoms I fucked her so hard the moans were higher , everything was perfect ,in the end I asked her to lick her body , licked pussy ,ass, boobs,then she sucked my cock until we sleeped ,all I know that she was dirty ,well before even having sex with her I knew she is an open minded woman , and a woman that looks that she donesnt know anything , but she knows everything, but never expected having sex with her ,well she was horny and that helped...but no one of us regretted that sex ever.. We still have sex from time to time ,and I started having sex with sex workers , joining threesomes..etc If u want pics of her text me.

Easy, Scooter Brown purchased Big Machine Records in 2019, meaning that HE was the owner of her masters now.

The man who helped two other men (Kanye and Justin Bieber) to bully her and harass her for years.

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.

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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.

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.

Guess who was Kanye’s manager that time? Exactly, Scooter Brown.

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.

That day she heard the audience booing at him but she thought they were booing at her, she was really devastated.

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.

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.

In 2020, Scooter Brown sold her masters to a private equity company. After that, Taylor announced her plans of re-recording her old albums.

Is it enough? Not yet, but what she did was a huge help and success for artists.

I made that bitch famous, I made that bitch famous

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.

Another peace of context: Taylor’s feud with Kanye west and his ex wife, Kim Kardashian.

Last but not least, we should mention the support she received from Kelly Clarkson in 2019. She suggested Taylor to re-record her music:

Back to the main topic: why is she re-recording her old albums?

After the extended video was released, Kim Kardashian decided to tweet:

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.

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.

Hope it’s clear enough! It wasn’t a great time for her and being her fan in 2016–17 was HORRIBLE.

About the legal implications of this decision:

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.

Does she owns her music now even if there’s no written “Taylor’s Version”?

After the acquisition she posted this on Tumblr (2019):

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).

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.

Obviously this whole situation sparked and he was call out for it. And here’s started all the lies he told the media.