How Taylor Won

Yahoo

2 days ago

It happened — Taylor owns everything. All her songs, all her masters, her life's work. She won. Eight years after her label Big Machine sold off her catalog, Taylor Swift has finally achieved her goal of buying it back herself. The most impossible battle of her career, the most invincible dragon she's ever picked a fight with, the most doomed leap she's ever taken. As she announced in her bombshell public statement on May 30, she bought her catalog from Shamrock Capital, after a six-year struggle for control over her own music. 'The memories,' she wrote. 'The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life's work.'
It can't be overstated what a victory this is for her, or the ramifications for other artists. This is the independence that generations of musicians have fantasized about, but never gotten close to seeing. 'Long Live' hits different today. 'New Romantics' hits different today. 'Ours' hits different, so does 'Dear John,' 'All Too Well,' 'I Did Something Bad,' and damn, don't even start about 'A Place in This World.' 'It's Time to Go.' All those songs feel bigger right now. It's one of those 'remember this moment' occasions. The patriarchy is having an extremely fucked day. Taylor won. How did this happen?
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'I'm trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent,' Taylor wrote in her bombshell public statement. 'But right now my mind is just a slideshow. A flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was this close, reaching for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that's all in the past now. I've been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found that this is really happening. I really get to say these words:
'All of the music I've ever made…now belongs…to me.'
Taylor's battle was always much bigger than her. She's taking on the whole issue of artists controlling their own work. When Big Machine boss Scott Borchetta sold her masters to her arch-enemy Scooter Braun in 2019, she wrote, 'He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn't want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.' Six years later, she owns herself.
Taylor was fighting for a kind of artistic freedom that her heroes never had, from Prince to Joni Mitchell. They never got to own their music, which was why Prince wrote 'Slave' on his face and renounced his name. Even Paul McCartney, the most successful musician ever, had to suck it up, after the Beatles publisher Dick James sold off the Lennon-McCartney song catalog in 1969, while both John and Paul were out of the country. (John was actually on his honeymoon.) Macca lived with this disappointment for decades, and being Macca, he didn't keep quiet about it. But still, he got up there every night and sang 'Hey Jude,' and had to pay for the right to sing it.
But Taylor, still only 35, has won control of her work in a way that never seemed possible for artists, even the biggest ones. It's an unprecedented victory—you have to wish Prince had lived to see this day. As she wrote, 'To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.' As she wrote, 'To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.' It seemed like a crazy battle for her to carry on — a guaranteed failure, a waste of her time. Yet as she said three years ago at the Tribeca Film Festival, in one of her all-time greatest quotes, 'People often greatly underestimate how much I will inconvenience myself to prove a point.'
Her fight began in 2019 when she announced that Borchetta had sold her masters to Braun. 'This is my worst case scenario,' Swift said. Braun was not just any music-biz mogul; he was a man who had seriously bad blood with Swift. (For one thing, he was the manager of a famous male rapper who was bizarrely obsessed with her — can't remember his name right now but he's the guy who just released the summer jam 'Heil Hitler.')
For Borchetta to sell her off to Braun was seen as gamesmanship, especially since both men openly strutted about the deal. To the general public, it looked like they were going out of their way to make her mad, and it's safe to say they succeeded. Talk about a 'be careful what you wish for' situation.
But when she raged about it, the industry response was basically: You're on your own, kid. Sorry, but that's the music business. Welcome to the big leagues. Unfair or not, that's how it works. All your old-school heroes, they all had to shut up and live with this, so what makes you special? This is the business we've chosen, remember? There was a bit of bemusement that she was taking this so personally. It was just proof that she was an emotional girl who didn't have a head for business and didn't get how things worked in the grown-up world.
'For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,' Taylor wrote at the time. 'When I left my masters in Scott's hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter.' But big deal — Scooter was just playing the game. As Bloomberg reported, 'All along it's been clear she was using personal animus towards him to make a few larger points about the music business.' Maybe she had some valid points about artists' rights. But as Bloomberg sniffed, 'Swift was never the ideal messenger.'
She lashed back in 2019 by announcing plans to re-record all six of her albums, in new versions that she would own. Every single person in the music industry — every last one of them — assumed she was bluffing. She wasn't. Since the Taylor's Version project became a blockbuster, nobody wants to admit now they thought it was a dumb idea, just as nobody wants to admit they booed Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival. It only looks like a brilliant move in hindsight, especially since it led to the Eras Tour phenomenon. But there was no precedent for any artist attempting this, much less getting away with it. Everybody thought it was crazy, even if they were rooting for her. Anyone who tells you different is a liar (and pathetic, and alone in life).
Controlling her own music was obviously a silly thing to even talk about — just a childish fantasy. It was another one of those doomed quests that Taylor has always kept taking on — like her fight with Apple Music over artists' rights, or her legal fight against the male DJ who groped her at a concert. (Combat, she's ready for combat.) She'll pick the battles that seem crazy, or beneath her, and turn them into major victories. Other artists were stunned she had the nerve to try Taylor's Version. SZA called it 'the biggest 'fuck you' to the establishment I've ever seen in my life, and I deeply applaud that shit.'
But it was the fight of her life, and she won. As Taylor wrote today, 'All I've ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy.' Today is that day, and it's a major victory for artists.
Her statement has so many ramifications for her fans. For one thing, we can now listen to the old version of 'Holy Ground' with a clear conscience, since sorry, but the Red (Taylor's Version) mix blew it with the rhythm track. (Try it again, Taylor—hell, you own it now. Take all the do-overs you want.)
Taylor also announced that she has barely begun work on Reputation TV. This can only mean she's about to drop Reputation TV. 'Full transparency: I haven't even re-recorded a quarter of it,' she wrote. 'To be perfectly honest, it's the one album in those first six that I thought couldn't be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you're into the idea) for the unreleased vault tracks from that album to hatch.'
As for 'full transparency,' yeah well — this is the artist who posted 'Not a lot going on at the moment' the day she wrote 'Cardigan.' We all know better than to trust her. She loves to deceive, to mislead, to disrupt. She's fooled us before; she will never NOT fool us. Don't be surprised if we get Rep TV this weekend.
Taylor also spelled 'thiiiiiiiiiiiis close' with the letter 'i' 12 times, which may or may not be a hint about TS12, just like water may or may not be wet. She added that her debut album has been totally re-recorded. 'I really love how it sounds now,' Taylor said, which probably means she's adjusted the accent a tiny bit. 'Those two albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would still be excited about.' Oh, the modesty. Yes, people will be slightly excited. The audience has been fiending for Debutation TV for way too long, the last two missing pieces of the Taylor's Version puzzle. She made headlines this week by not announcing these albums at the American Music Awards (or even showing up). 'But if it happens,' she wrote, 'It won't be a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.'
Today is a celebration for sure, and it's a celebration Taylor Swift has earned. Nobody thought this victory was possible. She had the time of her life fighting this dragon—even though nobody thought the dragon could lose. But she won. She did something bad, and it feels so good. Long live.
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