Taylor Swift has begun re-recording her first six albums and it sounds like it’s going better than expected.
“I have recently begun re-recording my older music and it has already proven to be both exciting and creatively fulfilling.”
She added,
“I have plenty of surprises in store. I want to thank you guys for supporting me through this ongoing saga, and I can’t wait for you to hear what I’ve been dreaming up.”
Taylor posted this letter shortly after the bombshell dropped that Scooter Braun sold Taylor Swift‘s masters for $300M to a private investor.
The open letter also revealed what had been going on behind the scenes and it wasn’t pretty.
Left: letter to her fans; Right: letter to Shamrock Holdings
The Grammy award-winning singer revealed that she tried to negotiate with Scooter for her masters, however, he wouldn’t even give her a quote without forcing her to sign an NDA saying that she would never speak badly about him in the press again.
But Taylor would not be silenced. She turned down the deal and, in turn, he sold her music to a private equity company called Shamrock Holdings.
At first, Taylor was interested in potentially working with Shamrock, but upon learning that Scooter would continue making money off her music despite selling it, she decided against it.
In a letter to Shamrock Holdings, she wrote,
She went on to tell them that she would continue with her plan to re-record her old music. She ended the letter by writing,
“I hope you will understand that this is my only way of regaining the sense of pride I once had when hearing sounds from my first six albums and also allowing my fans to listen to those albums without feelings of guilt for benefiting Scooter.”
Taylor’s sound has changed considerably since releasing her self-titled first album Taylor Swift 14 years ago.
Her first three albums, Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), and Speak Now (2010), were pretty country-pop and her fourth album, Red (2012), was considered a “crossover album” with a mixture of both country-pop and straight-up pop songs.
A lot of her older country songs were sung with a bit more of a twang — will she keep the same vocals when rerecording? Or will she bring more of her pop-style vocals that she’s leaned into the last few years?
As for the “surprises” she promises, I think we’re all hoping for a few bonus songs from her past that never made the original tracklist. But either way, I’m sure Taylor will deliver something amazing.
