It’s Official: Taylor Swift Can Finally Re-Record Her Old Music

#TaylorIsFree

Ever since Taylor Swift made the difficult choice to leave her old label Big Machine Records in 2019, she’s had to deal with nothing but nonsense and drama regarding the ownership of the original recordings of her older albums.

But as of this month, those albums (aka her masters) have officially been set free, so now she can finally re-record them.

As she promised on Good Morning America in August last year, her albums would be ready to re-record as of November 2020.

"It’s something that I’m very excited about doing because my contract says that starting November 2020, so next year I can record albums one through five all over again," she said.

While she didn’t give an exact date, it didn’t stop fans from immediately forgetting all about Halloween the second the clock ticked over to 1 November.

#TaylorIsFree has been trending on Twitter in celebration, and memes from her fans have rolled in. 

mood for the rest of the month because taylor swift is coming to save us all #TaylorIsFree pic.twitter.com/V0sKV71r4V

— Patrick (@READYF0RlT) November 2, 2020

Taylor on the way to re-record HER albums @taylorswift13 ♥️ #TaylorIsFree pic.twitter.com/xLfq0IW9Jz

— Duda (@swiftieaffairs) November 1, 2020

me and oomfs at the #TaylorIsFree parade pic.twitter.com/kEespzcGMp

— ً (@odetoryus) November 1, 2020

#TaylorIsFree
NO ONE WILL TAKE CREDIT FOR HER OWN WORK .... she’s FREE❤️ pic.twitter.com/arSY6taS5z

— TS (@istandwtaylor13) November 1, 2020

If you somehow missed how her albums got trapped in the first place, Scooter Braun and his company Ithaca Holdings purchased Swift's old label Big Machine in late June, which gave him ownership over her first six studio albums. Braun also manages Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber. 

While this might not seem like all that big of a deal, according to Swift, Braun had been bullying her on social media for several years. Braun also has a pretty strong affiliation with Kanye West and Bieber which obviously made the situation for the singer even worse.

At the time, she took to Tumblr and wrote an open letter to express her sadness but also to explain why she left Big Machine Records in the first place.

According to Swift, her old label offered to let her "earn" one album back every time she gave them a new one. So, I don’t blame her for leaving tbh.

"For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and 'earn' one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in," she said.

"When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter.

"This is my worst case scenario."

The feud then got even worse when Braun tried to prevent Swift from performing her old songs live. He claimed that if they were filmed for television, it would count as re-recording them before she was permitted to do so.

While this is all finally coming to a close, the bad news is that not all of her albums are being set free. Reputation, Swift’s sixth album, won’t be joining the other five as it is ineligible for re-recording until 2022, five years since its release.

Reputation seeing #TaylorIsFree trending today pic.twitter.com/JNiBMMugCf

— ♡levi (@mytearsdynasty) November 1, 2020

So, while you’ll have to wait for Reputation for now, you can find us jamming to the new recording of "You Belong With Me" at full volume.

Update 17/11/20: Braun has sold all of Swift's master recordings to an investment fund for more than $400 million, just 17 months after he acquired them.

Header Image: Manny Carabel via Getty Images