The news is out: Taylor Swift was recognized as Artist of the Decade at this year’s American Music Awards. It’s a shame that her war with Scotter Braun and Big Machine Records is ruining this fairytale.
On November 14, 2019, Taylor Swift put out a cry for help on her social media platforms as she released screenshots of text where Scooter Braun and Big Machine Records are the subjects, attached with the caption, “Don’t know what else to do.” In the screenshots, Taylor goes on to detail about how, to honor the award she is receiving, she wanted to create a medley of her own hits through the decade. The challenge she faces, however, is that Big Machine Records has denied her the right to recreate the songs that they own.
Scooter Braun owns a company called SB Projects, and this company acquired the rights to Big Machine Label Group this past summer. One of the impacts of this is that Scooter Braun and his partner Scott Borchetta have a deal with Swift that she will not be allowed to re-record any of her songs from her first five albums until 2020.
The impact of the deal was that Swift would not be allowed to perform the medley of her songs when she receives this award. What fans also found out in light of this news is that Netflix has been following Swift’s life for the past couple of years, but because of these legalities, they might not be able to put out the documentary. The logic is that the documentary would contain Swift’s older music and footage of the performances.
Swift ended her post by asking fans to let Borchetta and Braun how they feel about these matters and took it a step further by releasing their contact information into the world.
The day after that post, Big Machine released a statement denying the allegations that Swift made and claimed that they have “continued to honor all of her requests to license her catalog.” Considering that all of the things in her catalog are things that she created, it’s a bit strange that she has to request them. When it’s broken down, Swift owns the composition aspect of her songs because she wrote them, but Big Machine label group owns the recordings themselves because those are the rights they own contractually.
Swift and Braun have been at war for a while now, since Swift has claimed that she’s experienced “incessant, manipulative bullying” at the hands of Braun, and SB Project’s purchase of Big Machine Label Group is another way of him doing that. She wasn’t even given the opportunity to buy her masters, her life’s work up to today.
At this point, there has been a lot of back and forth, as well as a lot of Swift said this, and Braun said that. But at the end of the day, the real question is: would Taylor be performing the medley of her hits through the decade?
The answer: yes. Taylor performed her hits through the decade, alongside Halsey and Camilla Cabello, two artists who have spoken up on Swift’s behalf. What’s more is that during her acceptance speeches, Swift gave no mention of Big Machine Label Group, Scooter Braun, or Scott Borchetta. She just wore the titles of the albums she did with Big Machine on her body during the performance. That’s a mic drop performance itself, and nothing more could be said on the matter.