After turning four of her first albums into successful re-recordings, Taylor Swift plans to do the same with ‘reputation’, which seems to be the next album to be re-released as a re-recording, of which she will own the masters.
To provide context, the masters of the singer’s first six albums were sold to Scooter Braun against Taylor’s will, as she had a strained relationship with the businessman for several years prior to the purchase. Unable to stop the sale of the masters and after her record label refused to sell them to her, Swift decided to pause the commercialization of those albums, record updated versions and re-release them, ensuring that the masters to the new versions would be hers, giving her 100% decision-making power over their use and commercialization. In summary, the albums Scooter Braun bought cannot be used and are not worth even 30% of their value when they were purchased.
So far, the acclaimed song writter of numerous hits has successfully released four old albums as new versions: ‘Fearless’ from 2008, ‘Speak Now’ from 2010, ‘Red’ from 2012, and ‘1989’ from 2014, all of which now belong to her. There are only two albums left to be re-recorded and re-released, the first and oldest of them being the self-titled debut album ‘Taylor Swift’ from 2006, and the last one being ‘reputation’ from 2017.
Swift seems to be dropping hints about which of the two she will release next
‘reputation’ was released in the midst of the unpopularity and unfavorable image the artist got due to the media scandal with Kanye West in 2015 and 2016. Therefore, the theme of the album was cold, somewhat vengeful, and filled with symbolism alluding to snakes, as Kim Kardashian accused her of being a snake, or in other words, a toxic and two-faced person. The color palette on the cover was a grayscale, and coincidentally, today, February 4th, the same day as the Grammy Awards ceremony, Taylor Swift changed her social media profile picture to a black and white photo, just as she did when she first announced the album in 2017. Here is the photo in question.
Fans have the theory that Taylor will announce the release of ‘reputation (Taylor’s Version)’ tonight during the Grammy ceremony, to which she has already confirmed her attendance and is nominated in multiple major categories.
Let’s wait for tonight to confirm the news. Meanwhile, here’s the music video for the song that marked the beginning of Taylor Swift’s most controversial era back in 2017.
