Six years after the masters for her first six albums were sold to Scooter Braun without her knowledge, Taylor Swift officially bought back the rights to her entire catalogue. Swift announced the deal on Friday with a celebratory Instagram post and a lengthy letter shared on her website. “I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away,” she wrote. “I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening … All of the music I’ve ever made … now belongs … to me.”
In her letter, Swift thanked Shamrock Capital, the group that bought the rights from Braun back in 2020. Last week, “Page Six” reported that Braun was one of the parties encouraging Shamrock to sell Swift’s music back to her. Swift said that her dealings with the company were “honest, fair, and respectful.” Because she can’t resist a corny joke, Swift also wrote, “My first tattoo might just be a large shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
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While this is great news for artists’ rights and the concept of owning what you produce, it does come before Swift had the chance to finish her “Taylor’s Version” project. Of the six albums she no longer owned, Swift had rerecorded four of them, with only Reputation and her self-titled debut left to go. So, what’s going to happen there? Well, apparently she hadn’t even finished rerecording Reputation yet.
While Swift suggested that she might still release the “vault tracks” from Reputation — the unreleased songs she includes on each Taylor’s Version album — it seems like the album won’t be coming in its entirety. Swift shared that she “hadn’t even re-recorded a quarter” of her 2017 album yet. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it,” she wrote. “To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it.” And you know what? She’s actually right about that. Real Swifties know that Reputation is perfect as is. (Fight me!)
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She seemed more open to the idea of releasing Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version). “I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now,” she wrote. Swift added that if either of those last two albums come out, it will no longer be from “a place of sadness and longing for what I wish it could have.” That album’s 20th anniversary is next year, which seems like it would be the ideal time to rerelease it.
How will Swift celebrate the news? It seems she might already have gotten started. On Thursday night, she was spotted back in New York going out to her favorite restaurant, Via Carota. In Travis Kelce’s absence, she was joined by Dakota Johnson, and both women brought their brothers to dinner. Who better to toast your massive achievement with than your brother, your friend, and your friend’s brother? Here’s to Taylor’s Version!
