I am a self proclaimed Swiftie. Like most people, I grew up listening to Taylor Swift, and like most people I would project onto her songs. At age 9, Swift had us angry at relationships we had never been in. We were experiencing heartbreak despite not yet knowing what that entailed.
It’s been fifteen years since Swift first entered the scene, but what we did not know until recently was that she actually does not own any of the rights to her own songs. To mend this, Swift announced she would be re-recording her first six albums. This is great news for us Swifties as it means that we will experience “You Belong With me” and “22” back on the billboard charts once again.
Not only will we get a chance to listen to her classics again as adults, but the act of her rerecording her albums is significant for women artists within the music industry. It is no secret that artists, particularly women, have been manipulated or taken advantage of by those with power within the music industry. To hear the statement that Swift “doesn’t own the rights” to her own works sounds ludicrous, yet this is the reality of the industry.
The journey of Swift’s reclamation of her own work is years in the making. It begins when she was first signed onto Big Machine Records, who owned the rights to the masters of her songs. Then Big Machine was bought out by Scooter Braun in 2019, who sold her masters again for $300 million. Being that her music was sold twice without her knowledge or permission, Swift was appalled.
Additionally, the act of Braun making millions off of her music while she was not is simply absurd. In a statement released by Swift, she stated that Braun had exercised almost tyrannical control over her music by blocking her from performing old songs at award shows. Why should he even care? I couldn’t answer that because not letting Swift perform “Love Story” after winning Artist of the Decade at the AMAs feels petty. There is something monumentally wrong with the fact that there are people with the means to prevent her from performing her own music.
This is why none of her songs were on Spotify for a while. In an effort to combat the unfair treatment of Braun, she removed her songs off of the popular streaming platform so that he could not further profit off of her. She did eventually add the songs back, as she felt allowing her fans to listen to her music was equally — if not more — important.
Money aside, those were all songs that she wrote when she was as young as eleven to fifteen, sixteen, and into early adulthood. They hold precious memories and personal sentiments. No one is going to understand what those songs mean emotionally more than she would.
Design by Lohana Chiovarou
Luckily, in her signed contract with Big Machine Records, it stated that Swift was allowed to re-record her music starting in November 2020. Braun attempted to evade this by trying to make it so she could not make exact copies of her old songs. It’s disgustingly clear what his motive was here: money. If she remakes the songs and they sound just like the old ones, the old recording will no longer procure streams.
When Swift released her first re-recorded song on February 11th of “Love Story,” it was monumental. It doesn’t sound much different from the old version, but what should it matter? The process of Swift releasing the song on Taylor’s Version takes on an entirely new meaning, even if the sound itself is similar. It’s no longer just a song about falling in love; the song now represents her prevailing in the face of an industry that tried to take advantage of her.
Seeing Swift stand up and reclaim what is rightfully hers is awe inspiring. Especially for someone of her caliber it places the precedent of taking back what is hers in the eye of the public. It is a message to millions of fans and artists alike that they will not allow those with affluence to control them any longer. After all the abuse many artists endure at the hands of those in power, it is satisfying for someone out there to score a victory, and victories don’t happen often enough.
With the timing of the Britney Spears documentary, Framing Britney, it brings the conversation of abuse and manipulation back into light. The intricacies of music publishing laws elude me, but it feels right to see her name with her own music.
Article by Jax Samsell
Design by Lohana Chiovaru