Taylor Swift, a 31 year-old singer-songwriter, has released nine albums since the beginning of her career. In order, these albums include Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2009), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), 1989 (2014), Reputation (2017), Lover (2019), Folklore (2020), and Evermore (2020). Three of these nine works (Fearless, 1989, and Folklore), have won the Album of the Year award at the Grammy’s, indicating how successful Swift’s career has been.

Though in the past year, controversy has sparked over the star’s legal ownership of her discography.

On February 11th, 2021, Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her own, re-recorded version of Fearless. The collection of recordings contained 26 songs, six of them being tracks “From the Vault” (never before heard songs).

When the first single off of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), “Love Story,” came out, many fans of Swift were upset because they believed that the newly redone track sounded the same as Taylor’s original recording of “Love Story,” and speculated that this project was completed as a cash grab.

What they weren’t aware of, however, was that Taylor Swift is re-recording for the sole reason of not owning the masters to her first six albums. This is because Swift’s old record label, Big Machine, took the royalties to her albums. Record executive Scooter Braun sold Swift’s album masters for approximately $300 million. Therefore, Taylor’s old label now reaps the profits of the music she created.

Taylor Swift has taken it upon herself to re-record each album, reclaiming ownership to the songs she handcrafted. The one fault to this process is that Taylor is not allowed to re-record an album until at least five years after each album’s release.

Currently, Swift is not allowed to re-record any album that was released after Reputation. This led her to start the process by releasing Fearless (Taylor’s Version), which came out April 9th, 2021. Following that, it was announced that Red (Taylor’s Version) would be released on November 12th, 2021. Red (Taylor’s Version) will have 30 tracks, including nine “From the Vault” and a 10 minute version of “All Too Well.” 

Currently, since Taylor Swift only owns the masters to her albums Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swifties all over the globe are looking forward to the anticipated releases of each re-recorded album, along with new original works by Swift, as well. It is evident that whatever Swift conjures up in her time ahead, her Reputation will remain noteworthy.