Taylor Swift has officially announced the details of the first of her upcoming vintage classic albums. After declaring in 2019 that it has rewritten the masters for all its pre-Lover Swift revealed on February 11 that he would release the re-recorded “Love Story” at midnight, with the complete album re-recorded Fearless (Taylor version) next on April 9.
The re-released “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” begins with the phrase “We were both young when we first met”, and the new video with the lyrics goes over pictures of Swift with his fans around 2008, making the song a kind of letter of love for the Swifties. Her arrival initiates the launch of the plans that Swift announced in the summer of 2019, after news that her former label – Big Machine Records, from which she left in 2018 – had been sold to mega music manager Scooter Braun. The sale gave Braun the rights to all of the original recordings of Swift’s old music, which means that anyone who wanted to license one of Swift’s old songs to play on a TV show or movie or an ad would have to ask for permission. de Braun and pay you a licensing fee. And since Braun used to work with Kanye West, Taylor Swift’s sworn enemy, Swift was devastated. In an emotional post on Tumblr, she called the news “my worst case scenario”.
Not long after, in an interview with CBS ‘Tracy Smith, Swift said he planned to get around Braun by re-recording everything in the songbook he now owns, meaning all the songs she had released before her August 2019 album. Lover.
When Swift moved to Republic Records in the fall of 2018, she negotiated the main rights to all the songs she would create going forward. Then, by re-recording her old songbook with Republic Records, she will own the copyright to all new recordings. The move would give licensors the option of working directly with Swift and his team, instead of going through Braun. And that, in turn, would allow Swift to resume some command over his music and how it is used.
While rewriting her old masters, Swift kept herself busy during the pandemic. In 2020, she released two new albums: July Folklore and december Ever. And now she will have all Fearless – which includes some of his biggest early hits, like “You Belong With Me” – which will be released in April.