Kelly Clarkson told Taylor Swift she had a workaround after music manager Scooter Braun bought her back catalogue of hits.
“@taylorswift13 just a thought, U should go in & re-record all the songs that U don’t own the masters on exactly how U did them but put brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions. I’d buy all of the new versions just to prove a point,” she tweeted on Saturday, July 13.
@taylorswift13 just a thought, U should go in & re-record all the songs that U don’t own the masters on exactly how U did them but put brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions. I’d buy all of the new versions just to prove a point 💁🏼♀️
— Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) July 13, 2019
The suggestion came two weeks after the “You Need to Calm Down” singer, 29, posted a scathing Tumblr post on June 30, slamming Justin Bieber’s manager after he bought Big Machine Label Group in a deal worth a reported $300 million.
Swift was signed to the label from 2005 until the end of last year when she moved to Universal Music Group. The sale means that Braun and his investors own the rights to Swift’s masters recorded during that time.
The “Bad Blood” singer complained that she’d been the victim of “incessant, manipulative bullying” at the hands of Braun for years, ever since her 2016 disagreement with Kanye West (another Braun client) over the lyrics to his song “Famous.” She told fans that her musical legacy “is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
Swift also claimed that any time Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta “heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”
While Borchetta claimed that Swift had an opportunity to buy her masters before she left the label, an attorney for the singer told Us Weekly that the music exec “never gave Taylor Swift an opportunity to purchase her masters, or the label, outright with a check in the way he is now apparently doing for others.”
A source told Us earlier this week that Braun “was really shocked” at Swift’s outburst and “has tried to reach Taylor through multiple channels.”
The singer, who was ranked the world’s highest-paid celebrity amid the feud, emphasized her “Shake It Off” lyric about the “dirty cheats of the world” during an Amazon Prime Day event on Wednesday, July 10, in her first performance since the drama made headlines.
