It is widely known that Taylor Swift is rerecording her albums, but many people may not know why. Taylor’s motivation for this is to reclaim her music. In 2019 it was announced that Scooter Braun’s media company, Ithaca Holdings, had acquired Big Machine Label Group for $300 million. Through the deal, Braun became the new owner of Swift’s first six albums with Big Machine Records: her self-titled debut, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation. In a Tumblr post, Taylor Swift claimed that “for years I’d pleaded for a chance to own my work” but was instead “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.”
In November 2019, Taylor went to Twitter and shared that she was told that she could not perform any songs from her first six albums during her American Music Awards performance. Less than a year and a half after acquiring them, Braun sold Swift’s master rights to Shamrock Holdings for over $300 million. That same month, Swift shut down rumors that she’d purchased her music from Braun, revealing that the sale had occurred without her knowledge. “He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me,” she claimed via Twitter. During an interview for Variety, Scooter Braun claimed that details Taylor shared about the situation were “not based on anything factual.” He said that he “asked for her to sit down with [him] several times, but she refused.”
By re-recording her music, Taylor Swift is technically covering her own songs as new recordings, resulting in new tracks she fully owns, allowing her to control the licensing of her songs. As of November 2013, Taylor Swift has rerecorded four out of the six albums that she recorded during her time with Big Machine. On April 9th, 2021, she released Fearless (Taylor’s Version). On November 12th, 2021, Red (Taylor’s Version) was released seven months later. Two years later on July 7th, 2023, Taylor released Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). Finally, and most recently, on October 27, 2023, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was released.
As of November 2023, Taylor Swift has two albums left to re-record. These albums are Reputation, and her debut album, Taylor Swift. Some fans predict that the album Reputation will be the next announced rerecording. Many Swifties believed she would announce the rerecording on November 26th, during her concert in São Paulo, Brazil, her last Eras Tour show of 2023. However, It didn’t end up happening.
While there is no official release date for the album, two re-recorded songs from Reputation have already popped up this year. Neither song has been fully released on streaming platforms. The trailer for Prime Video’s show Wilderness marked the debut of Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version), featuring snippets of the song throughout the preview. On August 3rd, Delicate (Taylor’s Version) was featured in Season Two of the Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Fans are also pointing to a backward theory, involving Taylor’s surprise songs, the two tracks she performs that vary from concert to concert. The idea is that Taylor will play a song from each of her four rerecorded albums in reverse release date order, from 1989 to Fearless, leaving Reputation, which has only one song left to be performed during the Eras Tour.
