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Back in 2019, Taylor Swift was left devastated when she learned that her former label, Big Machine Records, had been sold to her archnemesis Scooter Braun.
Taylor initially left Big Machine in 2018 after spending more than a decade signed to the label. She cut ties with the company amicably, even penning a sweet message to its CEO, Scott Borchetta, when she announced her departure on Instagram.
Big Machine was set to retain the rights to the masters for Taylor’s first six albums, while she’d be the owner of all of her masters at her new label, Republic Records.
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However, Scott sold Big Machine to another company, Ithaca Holdings, in June 2019 — which happened to be run by none other than Scooter, who was famously managing Kanye West, now known as Ye, when he was publicly feuding with Taylor.
The drama between Ye, his then-wife, Kim Kardashian, and Taylor resulted in the singer being branded a “snake,” ultimately leading her to retreat from the public eye for a year. Given that Scooter had been close to Ye throughout this feud, Taylor explained that she was absolutely devastated that the manager would be able to profit from the use of her first six albums because Big Machine had sold him her masters.
At the time, Taylor wrote on Tumblr, “I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.”
She later added, “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.”
At the time, Taylor didn’t publicly address Kelly’s tweet. However, she took the singer's advice to heart, going on to release new, rerecorded versions of her old albums — featuring unreleased tracks — over the next few years.
Interestingly, Kelly claimed earlier this year that Scooter “took offense” at her suggestion to Taylor. “We ran into each other, and I think he reached out at the time to my manager,” she said. “It wasn’t anything against him. When she came out and said that and I heard about it, I was like, 'Whatever, rerecord them, your fans will support you.’”
Now Taylor has reflected on the drama with Scooter — and Kelly’s iconic suggestion that she rerecord her music — in a new interview with Time magazine.
“I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it.’ My dad kept saying it to me too,” Taylor shared of the moment she was introduced to the idea of rerecording her songs.
“I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away,” she continued before noting that her eventual decision to rerecord her old albums — and to add unreleased songs as a listening incentive for fans — was a coping mechanism for her.
“It’s all in how you deal with loss. I respond to extreme pain with defiance,” she said.
Taylor also directly accused Scooter of getting ahold of her masters “for nefarious reasons.” She said, “With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion.”
“I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold,” she went on, explaining how powerless she initially felt when Scooter bought Big Machine. “I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’”
Later on in the interview, Taylor appeared to take a dig at the recent reports that some of Scooter’s biggest clients are no longer being managed by him.
As the reporter of Taylor’s Time piece points out, several reports surfaced over the summer that singers Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato — both of whom had been signed with Scooter for years — had cut ties with him.
Perhaps referring to this now, Taylor noted that she’s learned there’s “no point” in trying to “defeat your enemies.”
“Trash takes itself out every single time,” she said.
You can read Taylor’s full interview with Time here.
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