Taylor Swift has revealed that she has her mother, Andrea Swift, and her brother, Austin Swift, to thank for helping her buy back the rights to her music catalogue.
The 35-year-old Grammy winner got emotional sharing the story of regaining ownership of her original master recordings in a landmark $360 million deal.
In 2019, music executive Scooter Braun acquired the masters of Taylor’s early discography — Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation — for $300 million, a move the artist publicly criticised, claiming she was not given the opportunity to purchase them herself.
The rights were later sold to the investment firm Shamrock Capital.
Taylor began re-recording the albums under her own ownership after signing a deal with Universal Music Group and Republic Records in 2018 before her new ownership deal.
The Shake It Off hitmaker was "in heaven crying" when she found out the news that she owned her works again.
Appearing on her boyfriend Travis Kelce's New Heights podcast, she recalled: "A couple of months after the Super Bowl in Kansas City, I get a call from my mom. She's like, 'You got your music.' I very dramatically hit the floor for real. Bawling my eyes out, weeping, like 'Really!?'"
She continued: "I said to myself, 'Go tell Travis in a normal way,' he was playing video games, and he put his headset down. I was like 'I got my music back!' And I was in heaven crying. This changed my life."
Taylor shared the news in May via a message posted to her official website.
She wrote at the time: “I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow.
“A flashback sequence of all the time I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell this news.
“I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now. I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found that this is really happening. I really get to say those words. All of the music I’ve ever made … now belongs… to me.”
She now owns her music videos, concert films, unreleased tracks, album art and photography.
Taylor also referred to the collection as encompassing “the memories, the magic, the madness, every single era, (her) entire life’s work."
