The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Cause she’s dead. 

Taylor Swift has been re-recording her original albums in order to own the rights to them.

Swift has been in the music industry for almost her entire life and through contract changes, she’s been taking more control of her own music now. She had to start re-recording her music because of those contract changes and the first contract not actually allowing her to own her first six albums. By taking over her own music and re-recording them, she’s trying to show how important it is for an artist to own their actual music. 

Swift has been in the music industry since she was sixteen years old, having her very first album released in 2006 and had many more to follow. She signed into Big Machine Records in 2005 at the start of her career and she was a part of with her first six albums. The contract with them expired in 2018 and she then signed to a different company, Universal’s Republic Records. When she made the switch in companies her contract changed, allowing her the ownership of the rest of her albums she would release. When she was signed under Big Machine Records, she didn’t have full ownership of her albums, allowing Big Machine to sell her work to a private-equity group, Ithaca Holdings, owned by music manager Scooter Braun. 

Braun is large in the music industry, managing stars like Kayne West and Justin Bieber, which makes his name well known to other artists. Braun was the one to sell Swift’s songs to another company, Shamrock Holdings, for a reported $300 million in 2019. Now, anytime someone plays one of Swift’s old and original recordings, Braun gets the money that comes from it. His move was smart for him but unfortunate for Swift, prompting her to call him out and start recording her original works again with more songs added onto them. 

With Swift’s new albums she’s not only recording the original songs again that her fans know, but also adding more songs onto the tracklist. She’s adding “From The Vault” songs which are the new songs added onto the tracklist that usually feature other artists. The first re-recorded album that Swift has released so far is “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” on Apr. 9, 2021. The next one she has announced to come out is “Red (Taylor’s Version)” on Nov. 12, 2021. She hasn’t announced any other re-recording of her other first six albums yet but she’s been doing slow releases with them and plans to continue to do them all so she can finally own her songs again.

Many artists have spoken up about the problems in the music industry and how their contracts are not always fair. Swift is not the first and she definitely won’t be the last having problems with the music industry. While Swift’s re-recordings might not seem impactful because they’re the same songs a few years later, they show other artists how important it is to own their own music. With most artists signing onto companies, they don’t realize what those companies can take from them especially when they’re younger which is exactly what happened to Swift. Her re-recordings will hopefully help influence other artists and help them realize how important it is to actually own their own work.