Wednesday night finally brought the moment Swifties have been waiting for. Not only did Taylor Swift officially announce her upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl, but she also appeared on New Heights, the podcast that boyfriend Travis Kelce cohosts with his brother, Jason, for the very first time. During the wide-ranging two hour interview, the three covered a lot of ground, but one of the most emotional moments of their talk came when Taylor teared up talking about owning her masters again.
Taylor’s battle for her masters has been a widely discussed topic.
After the rights to her first six albums were sold to Scooter Braun (and then to a company called Shamrock Capital), Taylor has been vocal about how many times she’s tried to buy back her catalog. Those attempts didn’t work, though, which inspired her to start re-recording her earliest albums so she could own the “Taylor’s Version” of her music.
But in May, Taylor revealed that she had finally been able to strike up a deal to buy her music back, and during her appearance on New Heights this week, she opened up about how it all unfolded behind the scenes.
At first, it was anything but a done deal.
“I want it because this is my hand-written diary entries from my whole life,” Taylor said. “These are the songs I wrote about every phase of my life. This is my photography, my music videos, most of which I funded, my artwork. Everything that I’ve ever done is in this catalogue.”
She explained that rather than send someone who represents her professionally to talk to the people at Shamrock, she sent her mom and brother, Austin, because she knew they would be able to properly explain just how much it would mean to her to be able to own her music again.
Then, the call came.
Taylor barely held it together and had to stop to collect herself more than once as she shared what happened when she received the call from her mom to tell her that Shamrock had accepted her offer.
“We were in Kansas City, and I get a call from my mom and she’s like, ‘We got your music,’” she said.
After she took a minute to “bawl [her] eyes out,” Taylor went to find Travis to tell him the news, and since he knew just how much this meant to her, he got emotional, too.
“I started crying too, you know I’m a crier,” he admitted, as Taylor confirmed, “you were weeping.”
Taylor said owning her masters has “changed my life.”
“I can’t believe it still. Every time I think about it, I have to tell the short version to everyone,” she said. “This will affect the rest of my life. I think about this every day now but instead of it being an intrusive thought that hurts me, I’m like, ‘I can’t believe this happened. How lucky am I?’”
