Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Taylor Swift, Universal Music 2021.
I suspect that many of you know the story of Taylor Swift and her campaign to regain control of her recording catalogue however I’ll give a brief update for those who don’t know of her troubles.
Taylor rocketed to fame with her single I Knew You Were Trouble from her debut album Fearless back in 2005.
She’d signed to Big Machine Records and by the time that the initial contract was up for renewal she was a superstar.
She moved labels to Universal Music, but her previous label still owned the rights to Fearless and her other early albums.
To complicate matters Big Machine sold the rights to Taylor’s songs to a company owned by powerhouse music manager Scooter Braun who Taylor accused of bullying and intimidation so, to regain control of her songs, she vowed to rerecord the albums in their entirety.
Fearless is the first of those rereleased albums.
On first listen there appears to be very little difference between the rerecorded version of Fearless and the original however a closer examination reveals an extra layer of lushness to the sound.
In addition to the slight improvements to the production of the new versions Taylor has sweetened the deal by including additional material on the disc.
You get the rerecorded original album plus a selection of tracks that were written for the album and didn’t make the cut and alternative versions bringing the total number of tracks to 26.
Taylor’s plan is to entice her fans to buy the new albums and to encourage the streaming services to preference her new versions over the originals.
So far it seems to be working. Platforms like Spotify have everything to gain by supporting her new versions and her fans are well aware of her intentions and are supportive.
In a way Taylor, because of her immense star power, is fighting her fight for ownership of her songs to assist every recording artist who has been in a similar position.
When emerging artists sign their first deals the odds are always heavily stacked in favour of the recording companies.
Paul McCartney fought for years to regain control of The Beatles catalogue before he bought it back.
Taylor has taken an alternative approach and I hope she’s successful.
