Making waves

As the mother of a daughter, I’m always looking for stories with female protagonists that go beyond your standard princess fare.
Britney Spears
Britney Spears

KOCHI: As the mother of a daughter, I’m always looking for stories with female protagonists that go beyond your standard princess fare. So, when my tweenager asked me why Tay-Tay was releasing Taylor’s versions of all her earlier albums, I couldn’t help but lay out it for her in as dramatic a way as possible. Taylor Swift’s remarkable story and willingness to stand up against music industry bullies has made her an icon for musicians everywhere to rally around.

It all started with the teenage girl who moved to Nashville at 14 to pursue her dreams and was signed to a big bad record label. She put out many great albums, topped the charts, sold-out stadiums, and did all the things little girls who want to be superstars aspire to do.

When her recording contract was up, she moved to another label, which was neither surprising nor acrimonious. At some later point, it came to be known that Taylor was trying to buy back the rights to her master recordings, but her old label wasn’t willing to sell it to her unless she was willing to stay at the label longer.

In all fairness, most record deals do allow the record label to own the master recordings made by their artistes, but in the case of an artist like Taylor Swift who has the means to be able to buy them back, if they were for sale, she should have been able to procure them. Instead, her label was sold to another media mogul, Scooter Braun, and his company Ithaca holdings. At this point, she openly cried foul at her catalog being sold not to her, but to someone she didn’t trust. For most other artistes, the story would’ve ended here, and musicians would’ve sadly shaken their heads about “labels”, and “contracts” and how it’s never really fair.

What Taylor did next was something that has created waves in the global music industry, and inspired artistes from Olivia Rodrigo to Bryan Adams to follow her lead. Since she wrote the songs, she simply re-recorded all her songs, thereby creating new masters and releasing her music again.

In this process, she has not only managed to shed light on unfair deals that artistes have suffered through but she’s also taken her power back. Many organisations have come out in support of her, with I Heart Radio even stating that they will play only Taylor’s versions of recordings and not the originals. So next time you queue up Tay Tay on a playlist, take a second to decide which version you want to play.

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