Scooter Braun has nothing but nice things to say about Taylor Swift amid their feud over his $300 million purchase of the Big Machine label, which included much of her music catalog masters.
While speaking with Billboard about his deal with Big Machine, the celebrity manager, 38, said that the “Bad Blood” singer, 29, made a good first impression on him when he first met her.
“Everyone at Big Machine — Taylor was kind, Scott was kind — everyone was kind to me and [Justin Bieber] when we were doing that show, and you don’t forget those things,” Braun told the publication in a piece published on Thursday, July 25. “I never forgot that.”
Both Braun and label founder Scott Borchetta refused to comment directly about Swift’s reaction to the purchase.
The Cats star sounded off against both men after learning about their deal in a Tumblr post on June 30. “For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,” she wrote at the time. “Instead, I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time.”
In addition to claiming to have missed out on the chance to own her masters, Swift also took issue with Braun as their new owner, specifically.
“All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years,” she wrote. “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. This is my worst case scenario.”
Borchetta, 57, responded to Swift’s allegations with a blog post on the company’s website that same day. “Taylor had every chance in the world to own not just her master recordings, but every video, photograph, everything associated to her career,” the music executive claimed. “She chose to leave.”
Her lawyer, Donald Passman, corroborated the Grammy winner’s claims to Us Weekly, however: “Scott Borchetta 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,” he said.
A source told Us earlier this month that Bieber and Ariana Grande’s manager was “really shocked” with her allegations.
Braun seemingly joked that the drama had aged on him with an altered photo of himself looking older on Instagram on July 16. “Last couple of weeks have really taken a toll on me,” he wrote.
Still, he has no intention of making his own public statement about her reaction. “Scooter is open to having a private conversation with Taylor to clear up everything that went down,” an insider told Us in July. “He reposted some messages of support on his Instagram Stories, but he has no intention of releasing a formal statement and blowing up the situation even more than it already has been. This is between Scooter and Taylor, not the world.”
