FEATURE:
Don’t Speak Now (Taylor’s Aversion)
Record Labels Limiting Artists Rerecording Their Albums, and Why It Is Important for the Artist to Have Control
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THIS is a bit of a mish-mash feature…
based on a couple of features I saw. The thing that links them is artists taking control of their albums and legacy. The fact that there is a lot of nostalgia and ‘correcting’ from some major artists. Something Laura Snapes mentioned in her recent feature – which I shall come to soon. I think that record labels can be a mixed blessing. In terms of what an artist can say and release. How easy (or not) it is for them to rerecord an album if they are not happy with the originals – or there are songs and messages that need to be clarified and amended. In terms of the biggest example, we have Taylor Swift. In August 2019, Swift announced that she would be rerecording her first six studio albums so that she can control her legacy and past work. That is a big move and call to make though, as reviews for the albums she has reissues have shown, it was the right move:
“In 2019, the music label Big Machine Records, which Swift had been signed to from 2006 to 2018, was sold to music mogul/manager Scooter Braun – best known for discovering Justin Bieber.
Along with ownership of the company, Braun also gained rights to the master recordings of all the music Swift had created during her time with the label. This included her first six albums: Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), 1989 (2014) and Reputation (2017).
This meant that anybody who wanted to licence any of Swift’s old songs for a movie or TV show would have to get Braun’s permission and pay him a fee.
“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. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta [CEO of Big Machine Records] would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future,” Swift wrote on her Tumblr account in June 2019.
“I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.”
The “Cruel Summer” singer explained that she too had only learnt about Braun’s purchase of her masters when it was announced to the world. “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years,” she said.
“Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it,” Swift said, calling it her “worst-case scenario”.
Her fourth recorded album, 1989 (Taylor's Version), was released at the end of last month. It was received with huge acclaim! The 2014 was her breakthrough and most popular album to that date, though Swift has added something to new to the original in terms of its impact and strength. I think all thew rerecorded versions so far have been a great move and added something to the originals. Set aside the fact Taylor Swift is a billionaire now; look at this from the perspective of an artist not cashing in. She is someone who is entitled to protect her legacy and control her recordings. In fact, regarding her wealth, she is extremely smart with it – and not someone who flaunts it at all. I do think that this is something women face more. Being misrepresented or messed around by labels. Not having the same freedom and commercial opportunities. There will no doubt be other artists like Swift who want to rerecord some of their albums for different reasons. Maybe it is the fact they are on new labels or they did not get a lot of say regarding what their album was about and how it was sold. Some might see older songs as a bit misrepresentative of who they are. As we heard at the end of last month, Taylor Swift might have opened doors. It does seem that labels, especially big labels, are trying to slam that to ensure that artists do not rerecord their albums – and potentially cause some problems for labels:
“Record labels and recording companies have been working to prevent artists from re-recording their albums like Taylor Swift, according to reports.
The trend – while having been around for decades – has been brought to light recently by Taylor Swift, who has accumulated billions of streams and broke Spotify records with the updated ‘Taylor’s Version’ re-recordings of her albums.
The new projects, which have seen her re-record albums such as ‘Red’, ‘Speak Now’, ‘Fearless’ and most recently ‘1989’, came after Scooter Braun bought Big Machine Records (who owned the masters to Swift’s first six albums) back in 2019 for $300million (£247.2m).
When news broke of Braun gaining the rights to Swift’s masters, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that this was “the worst-case scenario” for her, calling him out for his “incessant, manipulative bullying”, and proceeded to regain control of her master recordings by re-releasing the albums.
Now, major labels such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group are looking to put a stop to artists following in Swift’s footsteps, and have reportedly overhauled contracts for new signees.
Previously, artists were expected to wait two periods before they could re-release music – for instance, around five years after the original release date, or two years after the contract ended. However, according to a report by Billboard, top music attorneys are saying that they have been seeing contracts that expand that timeframe up to 30 years.
“The first time I saw it, I tried to get rid of it entirely,” Josh Karp, an attorney who saw the new restrictions in UMG contracts told the outlet. “I was just like, ‘What is this? This is strange. Why would we agree to further restrictions than we’ve agreed to in the past with the same label?’”
Gandhar Savur, attorney for Cigarettes After Sex and Jeff Rosenstock, agreed adding: “I recently did a deal with a very big indie that had a 30-year re-record restriction in it. Which obviously is much longer than I’m used to seeing.”
As the outlet explains, the concept of re-recording albums in an artist’s discography is by no means a new development, with Frank Sinatra doing so in the ‘60s as well as artists including Def Leppard. It has only been after the immense commercial success of Swift, however, that record labels have gone to implement a change.
Speaking with Billboard following the report, a spokesperson for UMG stated the label does not comment on legal agreements and highlighted an article from The Wall Street Journal which reported changes in contracts before Swift’s re-recordings.
Similarly, representatives for Warner and Sony did not respond to requests for comment.
Following Swift’s attempt to regain control of her master recordings, the singer-songwriter has inadvertently inspired others to do the same too, including 98 Degrees, who credited the singer with creating “an alliance between the artists and the fans now to support the re-recorded masters”.
Reports of record labels extending the period that artists have to wait before they can re-release their albums stem back to the end of 2021, when it was reported the Universal Music Group had set out new guidelines following Swift’s first run of re-releases.
This was first highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, which reported that the new agreements “effectively double the amount of time that the contracts restrict an artist from rerecording their work”.
In other Taylor Swift news, the singer was reported as becoming the most-streamed artist in a single day in Spotify history, and ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ was confirmed as Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2023 so far.
She was also reported as becoming a billionaire following her run of ‘Eras’ US shows and a new concert film”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna during her current Celebration Tour
I do hope that artists have more freedom and say in the future. Not only does it affect women, though they are subjected to more bullying and coercive and controlling behaviour. Perhaps seen more as commodities compared to their male peers. In any case, I want to link this to a feature from Laura Snapes in The Guardian. She mentioned three massive and legendary artists – Taylor Swift, Britney Spears and Madonna – who are on a nostalgia trip at the moment in terms of their tours, rerecording albums, and releasing a revealing and honest memoir. In some ways it is a chance to say that the past was not all great and things were bad in some ways. A change maybe to go back to a simpler time. Also, a way of celebrating big moments from the past and involving fans of all generations. As Snapes writes, there is some nostalgia and monetisation at play. When it comes to artists like Taylor Swift, Madonna and Britney Spears, it is about empowerment and taking control back. Reframing their narratives and legacies. Some songs that were problematic or a little cruel now being re-versioned. It is something that is vital for these amazing women. When it comes to rerecording albums and being able to put out the work they feel happiest with:
“Framing the big picture of their work also allows them to stress the context behind their music in an increasingly ahistorical, social media-led fan culture that reduces specific cultural flashpoints to vibes (or indeed eras, language Swift has knowingly repurposed). Though looking back plays into that too: the future has never seemed less certain, and so nostalgia offers a safe haven – even Spears’s harrowing account offers reassurance that, yes, the 2000s were an awful time to be a girl. But what does cultivating your legacy mean for your artistic future? The premium on youth and beauty already traps women in their pasts, as Madonna well knows, and makes it an uphill struggle to have your evolution accepted beyond a certain point. As triumphant as the Celebration tour is, it also represents Madonna accepting that she has crossed the Rubicon into the heritage industry, possibly even admitting defeat on her active artistic currency – her album sales have been on a precipitous decline since 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor and the tour setlist features only one song released since then, 2015’s Bitch I’m Madonna. Perhaps she’s accepting the limits of her physicality, too: “I must tell you, I don’t feel very well right now,” she told a crowd in Antwerp. “But I can’t complain because I’m alive.”
Beyond the monetary spoils of reliving her past, hindsight has brought Swift moral vindication: the exploitative power dynamics of formative relationships now transparently evident; even clumsily trying to rectify her internalised teenage misogyny by defanging her slut-shaming rager Better Than Revenge, from the rerecording of her 2010 album Speak Now, with new, softer lyrics. But arguably, cycling back and forth between her adult and younger self has affected her current output: her last original album, 2022’s Midnights, was a nostalgic reflection on “13 sleepless nights” from throughout her life, coupled with an atmospheric, ruminative sound. Her previous albums all boldly staked out new ground – even 2020’s folksy Folklore and Evermore went somewhere new by going back to the land – but this felt like her first consolidation effort.
Alongside those muted lockdown albums, Midnights might have suggested Swift pulling back from pop’s pyrotechnic mountaintop for a more sustainable, experimental, adult kind of music career – were it not for her subsequent (literally) seismic current tour, one of the biggest pop spectacles ever mounted. But it, too, feels as though it is the end of an era in pop superstardom, one that Madonna set in motion 40 years ago: there has been a downturn in the minting of Swift’s successors, with no significant pop breakthroughs since Olivia Rodrigo in 2021. Swift is one of the last monocultural stars, and she operates as one, in conversation with only herself and her legions of fans. Last week, she successfully pushed a four-year-old song (and not a rerecording) to No 1 in the US. The (on-and-off) 19-month Eras tour concludes in November 2024. It’s a long time to perform supremacy via nostalgia.
No one understands that tending your past means stealing from your future like Spears does. In the latter half of the conservatorship – which lasted one-third of her lifetime – she was contractually bound to endure her greatest successes in a five-year Las Vegas residency. Unable to escape, she started to give lacklustre performances on purpose “to punish the people who held me captive”, she writes. “Toning down my energy on stage was my version of a factory shutdown.” In March 2020, Spears posted a quote by the philosopher Mimi Zhu to Instagram that advocated for wealth redistribution and striking, prompting gags about Comrade Britney. It was no joke: Spears understood that she was the means of production. Her initial strike was far from successful: she said that she was confined to a punitive rehab facility for two months after protesting a complicated new dance move because she didn’t feel physically capable of it. But her freedom, post-conservatorship, means possibly shutting down the factory for good. “I don’t have to perform for anyone – on stage or off stage,” she writes.
Since the publication of The Woman in Me, Spears has made clear that she is done looking back. She lambasted the media for turning her story’s juiciest revelations into headlines. “Most of the book is from 20 years ago,” she posted on Instagram. “I have moved on and it’s a beautiful clean slate from here !!! I am here to establish it that way for the rest of my entire life !!! Either way that is the last of it and shit happens !!!” While she can’t cauterise the ongoing interest in her past – one that at its most productive might inspire legal changes to the conservatorship system – Spears has made clear that she is establishing a future on her terms, to which we may or may not be privy. She has done no book promotion; Instagram is the only place you can currently see her. There she maintains an unfiltered, instinctive, immediate presence, dancing and posting memes and thoughts at her whim. There is no more rehearsal, only now”.
Laura Snapes also mentions in her feature how Taylor Swift, Madonna and Britney Spears are white artists. Nostalgia and legacy-claiming. Compare that to Black contemporaries like Beyoncé and how her Renaissance Tour is about innovation and representing and reestablishing Black cultural legacies. In a social media where things have changed, legacy artists can now reach a new audience. They are being reframed at a time when there is more engagement and awareness. The media not controlling the narrative. Now, culture has shifted so that these new stories, tours and albums can represent the truth and be received as such. Taylor Swift especially is regaining control from forces that have distorted her legacy and music. Incredible women taking a big step to ensure they are heard and are not misrepresented. It means that the news that labels are hesitant about artists rerecording albums is a bit of a step back. There are legacy artists and current acts who have suffered issues with their label and have not been able to put out the music they wanted. If they are condemned or blocked from doing so, I think that is going to cause a massive problem. Artists wanting to be independent or not having any label at all. Being able to ensure that, years from now, that artist is not misrepresented is vital. I don’t think artists having control and following in the footsteps of Taylor Swift is bad or would be compromising for labels. It is a complex situation. Maybe the right to rerecord albums or reframe the past is reserved to major artists. It would be great if there was more support to give artists say in how their music is sold and ensure that they can, if needed, revisit the past and set the record straight. Rather than letting them speak now, it seems labels may prefer that their artists…
DON’T speak at all.