Taylor Swift has regained control of her music, buys back first 6 albums
By MARIA SHERMAN, AP Music Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Swift has regained control over her entire body of work.
In a lengthy note posted to her official website on Friday, Swift announced: “All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me.”
According to the note, the pop star has purchased her catalog of recordings — originally released through Big Machine Records — from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount.
“We are thrilled with this outcome and are so happy for Taylor,” Shamrock Capital said in a statement.
Over the last few years, Swift has been re-recording and releasing her first six albums in an attempt to regain control of her music.
The series was instigated by music manager Scooter Braun’s purchase and sale of her early catalog and represents Swift’s effort to control her own songs and how they’re used. Previous “Taylor’s Version” releases have been more than conventional re-recordings, arriving with new “from the vault” music, Easter eggs and visuals that deepen understanding of her work.
In between re-recordings, she has released new music, including last year’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” announced during the 2024 Grammys and released during her record-breaking tour.
So far, there have been four re-recorded albums.
Swift’s last re-recording, “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” arrived in October 2023, just four months after the release of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” That was the same year Swift claimed the record for the woman with the most No. 1 albums in history.
Fans have theorized that “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” would be next: On May 19, “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” aired nearly in full during the opening scene of a Season 6 episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Prior to that, the song was teased in 2023’s Prime Video limited-series thriller “Wilderness” and in Apple TV+’s “The Dynasty: New England Patriots” in 2024. Also in 2023, she contributed “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” to Prime Video’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
But according to the note shared Friday, Swift says she hasn’t “even re-recorded a quarter of it.”
She did say, however, that she has completely rerecorded her self-titled debut album “and I really love how it sounds now.”
Swift writes that both her self-titled and “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” “can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right.”
A representative for Swift did not immediately respond to request for comment.