Taylor Swift makes major announcement about her music in emotional statement
Taylor Swift has shared a major announcement about her music with her fans. The singer-songwriter issued an emotional statement today describing the news as her "greatest dream come true," whilst thanking her fanbase for their support.
Taylor, 35, has shared that she now owns "all of the music" that she's ever made, including unreleased songs. It comes following years of her releasing re-recorded versions of albums from earlier in her career following a dispute over her back catalogue, which has previously made headlines.
The Grammy Award winner also teased in the message on her website that re-recorded versions of her debut album Taylor Swift, from 2006, and Reputation, which came out in 2017, could still be released. She suggested that will be "when the time is right" and said they will be a "celebration".
It comes after the superstar brought her record-breaking Eras Tour to Ireland last June, playing to hundreds of thousands of fans during a three-night sting in Dublin's Aviva Stadium.
Sharing the news today, Taylor told fans: "All of the music I've ever made ... now belongs ... to me." She said it includes all her music videos, concert films, album art and photography, and unreleased songs. She added: "The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life's work."
She said: "I'm trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slidehow. 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 out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever 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 out that this is really happening."
Taylor added: "To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it." She said that fans know how "important" it has been to her, "so much so" that she's released re-recorded versions of four albums.
She continued: "The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned the Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music. I can't thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now."
The artist said: "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. I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me."
Taylor said it had been a "business deal" to the company - who are understood to have most recently owned her masters - but she felt as though they "saw it for what it was" to her. She explained in the statement: "My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams."
She also shared an update on Reputation (Taylor's Version), which fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of. Taylor said she hasn't "even re-recorded a quarter of it" yet. She didn't rule out finishing the new version though.
Taylor said that album was "so specific" to a particular time in her life, adding that she "kept hitting a stopping point" when she tried to remake it. She said: "All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief."
She shared: "To be perfectly honest, it's the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn't be improved upon by redoing it." Taylor said that she "kept putting it off" but suggested that there "will be a time," if fans want it, for the unreleased Vault tracks "to hatch".
Taylor added: "I've already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now. Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about". She said it wouldn't be from a "place of sadness and longing" though now, with it instead "a celebration now".
She concluded by writing: "I'm extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans. Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their own master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I'm reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen."
Taylor thanked fans for their support and said: "Every single bit of it counted, and ended us up here. Thanks to you and your goodwill, teamwork, and encouragement, the best things that have ever been mine ... finally actually are."
The dispute over the master recordings attracted attention after now retired artist manager Scooter Braun got the rights to Taylor's first six albums in 2019 when his company Ithaca Holdings bought her former record label Big Machine Label Group. Taylor had moved away from the label, which reportedly owned the rights to her first six albums, the previous year and joined Universal Music Group. It was then announced in 2020 that her master recordings had been sold to investment firm Shamrock Holdings.
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Irish Independent
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‘Feels bigger than herself': the importance of Taylor Swift's latest victory
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Or her Billboard's Woman of the Year speech in 2014 in which she called for fairer compensation of writers, musicians and producers – a point she cited five years later when accepting Woman of the Decade in 2019, in a speech that is worth revisiting for the contrast between which fights resonate, and which rankle. Taylor Swift arrives on to the Aviva stage for the first of her three sold-out Dublin gigs as part of her Eras tour. Picture: Chani Anderson The part about adjusting her sound and image to appease critics? Flop, mild applause, one of many instances where Swift evinces a sensitivity to criticism and bone-deep desire for popularity that is so incongruous with her stature as arguably the most famous woman on the planet that I find it endearing, the most human element of her incomprehensible celebrity. The part where she bluntly calls out 'the unregulated world of private equity coming in and buying up our music as if it is real estate, as if it's an app or a shoe line'? 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The Irish Sun
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Taylor Swift and Dakota Johnson enjoy night out with rarely-seen brothers Austin and Jesse in NYC
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