While revealing she has officially bought back her music catalog, Taylor Swift shared a surprising statement about the status of the rerecorded version of Reputation.
“Full transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” Swift, 35, wrote in a lengthy letter shared on her website on Friday, May 30. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposefully misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief.”
She added, “To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music or photos or videos. So, I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for unreleased vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
Swift has been steadily rerecording all her first six records after her former label, Big Machine, sold the masters to a third party. Only 2017’s Reputation and her 2006 self-titled debut are left.
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“I’ve completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how that sounds now,” Swift added in her letter. “Those two albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about. But, if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”
Elsewhere in her letter, Swift revealed that she has “been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals” now that she officially owns her entire discography.
“I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away,” the Grammy winner wrote. “But, that’s all in the past now. … I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me.”
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Swift’s full ownership “with no strings attached” also extends to her music videos, concert films, album photography and unreleased songs, in addition to “the memories, the magic [and] the madness.”
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” she said. “To my fans, you know how important this has been to me — so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four of my albums, calling them ‘Taylor’s Version.’ The passionate support you showed these albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music. I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.”
Swift concluded her note by thanking her fans for their “goodwill, teamwork and encouragement.”
“The best things that have ever been mine finally actually are,” she wrote, quoting Speak Now’s opening track. “Elated and amazed, Taylor.”
