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Following a threat that rocked the music industry and started industry-wide conversations about artistic property, Taylor Swift announced Thursday that she will be releasing a newly recorded version of “Fearless,” her second. and the most successful album, part of a long term plan to outright control his old songs.
“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could have imagined and made me more and more determined to re-record all of my music,” said the singer, 31. a statement on social networks. She added that the rollout of her re-recordings would begin at midnight with the release of a new version of the song “Love Story” – now called “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” – her first Billboard Top 10 single, just in time for Valentine’s day. Day.
“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” will be released on April 9 and will feature 26 songs in total, including hits like “You Belong With Me” and “Fifteen,” as well as six unreleased tracks written when Swift was a teenager. “’Fearless’ was an album full of magic and curiosity, the happiness and devastation of youth,” Swift wrote.
First released in 2008 by the Nashville label Big Machine, “Fearless” represented Swift’s mainstream breakthrough outside of country music and won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, on the point to sell more than 10 million copies in the United States. Like most artists, Swift did not then control the rights to her recordings, which belonged to the label, although she did, along with her writing collaborators, hold separate rights to the compositions of her songs, known as edition name.
In 2019, shortly after Swift signed a different deal with Universal Music Group that gave him the rights to his masters in the future, powerful music director Scooter Braun bought Big Machine – and with it, the master recordings. of Swift’s first six multiplatinum albums – in a $ 300 million deal that included an investment from private equity firm Carlyle Group.
At the time, Swift said the deal “stripped me of my life’s work” and handed her catalog “into the hands of someone who tried to take it apart.” (Braun, who represents artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, once worked with Kanye West, a longtime Swift rival; she accused Braun of “relentless and manipulative bullying,” which he denied.) His fans responded with a public pressure campaign on social media.
Swift’s back catalog has since changed hands again: Braun’s Ithaca Holdings company sold the rights to Swift’s music – the albums “Taylor Swift”, “Fearless”, “Speak Now”, “Red”, ” 1989 ”and“ Reputation ”- to Shamrock Capital, an investment firm founded by Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney, for more than $ 300 million. Swift said she turned down an offer to partner with Shamrock, citing Braun’s continued financial involvement.
But before the second sale, Swift had previously indicated that she planned to create a new set of master records that would closely match the ones she didn’t own, potentially devaluing the original assets.
The owner of a master recording controls its use, including selling albums or licensing songs for movies, television, commercials, or video games. While an artist can still collect royalties from these recordings, record companies have historically retained the rights to the masters in exchange for the financial risks they take in supporting and promoting an artist.
By creating new master recordings of her older songs, Swift, one of the most powerful celebrities in music and beyond, not only urges her loyal legions of fans to stream and buy the versions she owns, but can also encourage brands, filmmakers and other potentials. business partners to avoid using the originals. In December, Swift featured the new “Love Story” in an ad for the Match dating service.
Swift isn’t the first artist to try such a maneuver, although she may be the most prominent and dedicated to the project. Standard recording contracts typically include terms that prohibit artists from releasing re-recorded works for three to five years, or more, from its initial release – restrictions that became common after the Everly Brothers released new ones. versions of past hits on a new label in the early 1960s.
Since then, group Def Leppard has released what they called ‘fakes’ of their biggest hits in an argument with their label, while pop singer Jojo released newly recorded versions of her first two albums, which were released. ‘were not available on streaming services in 2018 after the expiration of its re-recording clauses.
Swift said on “Good Morning America” in 2019 that her contracts allowed her to re-record her first five albums starting in November 2020. “I think artists deserve to own their work,” she said. “I’m really passionate about it.
Artists like Prince, Janet Jackson, and Jay-Z had previously emphasized the importance of musicians having their own masters; Swift’s public missives on the matter seemed to revitalize the conversation for a new generation. In 2018, leaving Big Machine, where she first signed at age 15, Swift announced a multi-album deal with Universal Music Group and its subsidiary, Republic Records, where she would hold her recordings.
The deal covered “Lover,” from 2019, and Swift’s two pandemic albums from last year, “Folklore” and “Evermore”. The singer has six Grammy nominations next month, including Album of the Year for “Folklore” – her fourth career nod in this category and possibly her third win.
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