59. It’s been a long time coming
This week, beaming with pride, Taylor Swift announced that she officially owns all the rights to her art. Through the letter on her website, Taylor shares that the art in question doesn’t just include the master recordings of songs from her first six albums, but every picture from album photoshoots, music videos and concert film rights, “You belong with me”.
For a reported $360 million, around equal value to what they were originally sold back in 2020, Swift shares in her letter that she has The Eras Tour to thank for bringing her the profits required to secure her music catalogue back. It is no surprise that fans drew parallels between the key-shaped Eras Tour stage and a metaphorical key to buying back her masters. The devil works hard, but Taylor Swift and her team work harder.
Listening to the first re-release, Fearless Taylor’s Version, on the back roads of my country hometown in 2021 is ingrained in my memory. Not just the scenery and sound of it, but the feeling it brought me. As a late-to-the-party Swiftie, this was my first real entanglement with every song of Fearless, aptly named especially for the re-released version of the 2008 album. At the very least, it was intriguing listening to a song written by a 15-year-old, being sung in retrospect by the same person only in their 32-year-old existence. Feeling the magic, liberation and passion of musicians through their music is like a penny drop moment when you finally understand a concept; satisfying and inspiring.
Each subtle sonic difference was a reminder of the mammoth undertaking the re-recording would have been. Not once, not twice, but re-releasing, promoting, photographing and recording four times over. Aside from admiring and appreciating the hard work put in, upon finding out in 2021 that unreleased songs which Swift is retrieving “From The Vault” for these albums, the fans (me and my fellow conspiracy clowns on TikTok) have been vying for them ever since.
TLDR the 2016 reputation album:
Written about the time in Taylor’s life when she felt the world hated her (thanks K**ye West)
She went into hiding, finding herself and love along the way
Wrote the whole album about that love with Joe Alwyn (see also, the most romantic, gut-wrenching and understandable love songs ever)
6 years later, they broke up
How can you expect someone to re-record songs including lyrics like “I want to wear an initial on a chain around my neck, not because he owns me, but because he really knows me” and “please don’t ever become a stranger, whose laugh I could recognise anywhere”? Yikes, I get it, but I still kinda definitely want some version of a Taylor’s Version. It is still okay for me to want the Reputation Vault Tracks, is my new affirmation in the mirror in the mornings.
While live-streaming the 2023 Grammys, I bet my left pinky toe on Taylor announcing Reputation (Taylor’s Version). Somewhat disappointingly, she announced The Tortured Poets Department instead, and fortunately, those who knew about my bet let me keep my pinky toe. Not to say you didn’t have an idea of how invested we Swifties are, but the re-release of these albums has been near religious.
Each Taylor’s Version was a new vow to not listen to the affectionately called “stolen versions” and commit to streaming, purchasing and supporting the Taylor-owned editions. It felt like cheating if I went back and listened to this original recording of Everything Has Changed, even though it is objectively better than the re-recorded one (thanks, Ed Sheeran).
Not to worry now, because we can listen to all of the versions all of the time now and know the one benefiting from them is the artist who put them out into the world in the first place. This is historic for the music industry and will shape the future of artists’ contract negotiations for years to come. I guess what I’m trying to say is, Taylor is The Man.
