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An adorable story from Kelly Clarkson just told us a little bit more about exactly how Taylor Swift’s rerecords came to be.
While speaking to E! News this week, Kelly gushed about her relationship with Taylor.
“You know what's so funny? She just sent me flowers,” Kelly told the reporter. “She’s so nice. She did.”
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Adorably, the talk-show host explained that Taylor sends her gifts in the mail whenever she releases one of her rerecorded albums.
“She was like, ‘Every time I release something’— ’cause she just did 1989. I got that really cute cardigan, too,” she said.
Now, if you’ve forgotten what the connection is here — allow me to provide some context.
So, back in 2019, Kelly was actually one of the first people to publicly encourage Taylor to start rerecording her old music after she lost ownership of her masters to Scooter Braun.
At the time, Taylor claimed she’d repeatedly tried to buy back her master recordings from her old record label but was denied. She described Scooter as her “nemesis,” and said the decision by her record label to sell him the masters was her “worst nightmare.”
Scooter has since sold the masters on, but Taylor has continued to rerecord her music in order to reclaim her art and undercut the profit made by others.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Taylor has now rereleased four of her first six albums: Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and, most recently 1989.
By rerecording her albums and encouraging her fans to disregard the originals, Taylor has expertly been able to prevent Scooter and others from profiting from the masters she believes she should have owned all along.
So, upon seeing the controversy surrounding Scooter’s $300 million dollar acquisition back in 2019, Kelly took to Twitter — now known as X — to encourage Taylor to take matters into her own hands.
And, seemingly inspired by Kelly’s advice, Taylor has released all of her rerecords with brand new album artwork, as well as a series of “vault” tracks — songs which were written for the original albums but didn’t make the final cut. These new tracks act as a huge incentive for fans to stream the rereleased version of the album, and have often ended up outperforming the original songs.
Of course, more than a single tweet would have gone into Taylor’s monumental decision to embark on her rerecords. However, her continual show of gratitude all these years later suggests that Kelly perhaps played a more significant role in the move than we’d previously assumed.
Despite this, Kelly praised Taylor’s business acumen and acknowledged that she soon would’ve found the answer herself.
“I love how kind she is though,” she told E!. “She's a very smart businesswoman. So, she would have thought of that.”
“But it just sucks when you see artists that you admire and you respect really wanting something and it’s special to them,” Kelly continued. “You know if they're going to find a loophole, you find a loophole. And she did it and literally is, like, the best-selling artist I feel like of all-time now.”
As with most things Taylor puts her mind to, her latest rerecord was an immense success. Within one week after it was released last month, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) became the top-selling album in the US for the entire year.
On top of that, the rerecord has also surpassed the first-week sales of the original 1989 album, making it her first “Taylor’s Version” to top its OG counterpart.
Good call, Kelly!
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