Taylor Swift subtly addressed her ongoing conflict with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta during her American Music Awards performance last night.
The singer/songwriter began her multiple performances on the show with a rendition of “The Man”, a track from her latest album Lover, in which she sings about being treated differently if she were a man.
“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” she sung, in a shirt-dress decorated in titles of her albums.
“And I’m so sick of them coming at me again,” she continued. “‘Cause if I was a man, then I’d be the man.”
Swift’s outfit, a long white shirt decorated in the titles of her past albums, also appeared to emphasise the title of her 2010 record Speak Now.
Swift claimed this month (15 November) that Braun and Scott Borchetta, the owner of her former label Big Machine, had blocked her from performing her old hits at the AMAs, where she was due to collect the Artist of the Decade award. Braun and Borchetta denied the claims.
Swift previously condemned the men for acquiring her back catalogue earlier this year in a deal worth a reported $300m. Swift explained that she was “sad and grossed out” by the sale, which granted both men ownership of her early master recordings.
“My musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it,” Swift said at the time. She has said that she intends to re-record and re-release her first six albums, to regain control of her masters.
This weekend (23 November), Braun appealed to Swift to tell her fans to stop sending him death threats.
