Taylor Swift is rapidly becoming one of the biggest artists in the world, how did she reach such high fame?!
Taylor Swift’s newest re-record is here! 1989 was the fifth studio album released by pop phenomenon Taylor Swift; the album was originally released in 2014 and it was Swift’s first pop album after she received criticism on her country musician status from her previous albums. 1989 is home to some of Taylor Swift’s biggest hits, including ‘Shake it off’ and ‘Blank space.’ It is her fourth re-recorded album, following her ‘Speak Now’ re-release in July.
Taylor Swift has been committed to re-recording her albums since she cut ties with her old record label company, Big Machine Records. Swift was signed to Big Machine Records since the start of her musical career, back in 2005. She was thirteen at the time and only cut off ties with them in 2018. She is now signed to Republic Records after the dispute with her old company.
The dispute came when Big Machine Records was sold for 330 million dollars to media proprietor Scooter Braun, who took over leadership of the company and all the master’s they owned. This included Taylor Swift’s first six studio albums, which Taylor had already requested to purchase the master’s from the company and had been turned down by them numerous times. Braun was known to have a bad relationship with Taylor Swift and other artists but was still allowed to buy the company which angered Swift.
With the new CEO and the failure to buy back her masters, Swift dedicated herself to re-recording her first six albums to claim them back. This meant allowing her fans to listen to her older albums which she owned and gained profit from, as well as releasing ‘from the vault’ tracks on each re-release as an extra incentive for fans to listen to her newer albums. ‘Vault’ tracks are known as unreleased songs, songs which Swift wrote during the creation of each album but ones which never made the album. Each re-record has about five vault songs.
The additional songs in 1989 are: “Slut!”, “Say Don’t Go”, “Now That We Don’t Talk”, “Suburban Legends” and “Is It Over Now.” These songs focus on Swift’s experiences with “Is It Over Now” taking the world by storm as listeners speculate the song focuses on her and Harry Styles’ relationship back in 2012 – the lyrics talk about a bad relationship and hint toward Styles’ being a bad boyfriend and how he seemingly moved on from her quite quickly. Because of this, Styles received quite a bit of backlash while other fans point out there is no bad blood between them now!
Furthermore, Taylor Swift’s 1989 has dragged her to ‘1st in the world’ on Spotify – topping artists like The Weeknd and Drake. Swift’s fame only seems to grow more. She still has two re-records to publish as well as continue her famous ‘Era’s Tour’ this month, starting in South America and travelling to Europe next year.
How do you think Taylor Swift is managing her success?
Edited by: Anna Shipman
Designed by: Dani Price
