Taylor Swift Reveals Fate of Reputation, Taylor Swift Rerecordings After Masters Deal

Watch:Taylor Swift Buys Album Masters After Years-Long Music Battle

Look what you madeTaylor Swift do.

The “Delicate” singer—who had beenrerecording her first six albums following a music battle withScooter Braun—officially revealed that she now owns all of her music. So, what will happen to the updated versions of Reputation and Taylor Swift?

“What about Rep TV? Full transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” Taylor explained in a letter shared to her website 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 purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snark and mischief.”

Indeed, Taylor admitted that while the rerecording of her debut album was complete—and may be released at some point in the future—Reputation will not see the same fate. 

“To be perfectly honest, it’s the album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved on by redoing it,” Taylor admitted. “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 the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”

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That said, she isn’t completely scrapping them if her fans express interest in hearing them. 

“If it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have,” she continued. “It will just be a celebration now.”

Theoriginal version of Reputation, which Taylor released in November 2017in response to criticism she’d been receiving in the press, featured 15 songs, including tracks about former boyfriendJoe Alwyn—”Gorgeous” and “King of My Heart”—as well as her feud withKanye West on “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”

It was Taylor’s clash with Kanye and then-wifeKim Kardashian—at the height of which the Kardashiansstar posted parts of a conversation between Taylor and Kanye discussing his song “Famous” online—that led the “Bad Blood” artist to take a step back from the spotlight.

“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” Taylor recalled toTime last December, referencing the debate over if she knew she’d be referred to as “that b–tch” in Kanye’s song. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before.”

“I moved to a foreign country,” she continued. “I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”

Matt Winkelmeyer/TAS18/Getty Images for TAS

And how does she feel about the Reputation era today?

“It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” Taylor told Time. “I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, Sick snakes and strobe lights.”

Though she did confirm the updated version’s vault tracks—if fans care to hear them—will be “fire.”

Keep reading for more fascinating facts about TSwift.

1. While Taylor Swift writes all of her own music, she specifically wrote her entire Speak Now album all by herself. No co-writers, just her. The album was released in Oct. 2010, when Taylor was just 20.

2. She grew up on a Christmas tree farm with her family in Pennsylvania. She references her time there on her holiday song of the same name.

3. She’s named after James Taylor. That’s right, from one music legend to another.

4. She’s a former Abercrombie model. Just like fellow stars Channing Tatum, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Roberts and Ashton Kutcher, T.Swift modeled for the company in 2003.

5. She gave Eric Church her first gold record. Back in 2006, she joined Rascal Flatts on their tour after Church was fired. “Actually, she called me after I got fired. I read in the paper that we were fired. She called and said ‘I want you to know that I love what you do,'” Church previously told the Arizona Daily Star. “I joked with her, ‘This is your crowd; they’re going to love you. You’re going to owe me your first gold record.’ I was kidding, but when she got her first gold record she gave me one. It came with a note: ‘Thanks for playing too long and too loud on the Flatts tour. I sincerely appreciate it. Taylor.'”

6. She has doubled-jointed elbows. During her 2016 Vogue 73 questions video, Taylor was asked if she has any “really cool or bizarre” talents. In response, she said, “OK, I’m well aware that this is not a talent, but this is like the only thing that I can do. I have double-jointed elbows.”

7. Her drink of choice? Vodka and Diet Coke, as revealed in that same Vogue video.

8. She turned off her comments on social media to “block some of the noise.” In her essay for Elle, entitled “30 Things I Learned Before Turning 30,” Taylor explained, “social media can be great, but it can also inundate your brain with images of what you aren’t, how you’re failing, or who is in a cooler locale than you at any given moment. One thing I do to lessen this weird insecurity laser beam is to turn off comments. Yes, I keep comments off on my posts. That way, I’m showing my friends and fans updates on my life, but I’m training my brain to not need the validation of someone telling me that I look [fire emojis].”

9. She was originally going to name her seventh studio album Daylight before landing on Lover. But since the album was the follow-up to reputation, the singer thought the name Daylight would be a little too on the nose. So, when Taylor wrote the song “Lover,” she decided that would be the name of the album.

10. She’s the youngest solo artist to win Album of the Year. T.Swift was just 20 when she won the top honors in 2010 for her beloved album, Fearless.

11. Taylor made history at the 2024 Grammys, becoming the first female artist to win Album of the Year four times. (For Fearless, 1989, Folklore and Midnights.)

12. The singer’s album, Lover, sold over 1 million pure copies in the United States in its first few months alone, according to Chart Data. This was the first album to reach this milestone in 2019.

13. More historic milestones! At the 2019 American Music Awards, Taylor surpassed Michael Jackson‘s record to become the most awarded artist at the AMAs. 

14. As a child, Taylor wanted to be a stockbroker, just like her dad! But she went on to find her true calling in music, later moving from Pennsylvania to Tennessee with her family to kick off her career.

15. She learned to play guitar around the age of 12 after learning a few chords from a technician who was fixing her computer. She then went on to write her first song, “Lucky You.”

16. She’s “obsessed” with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. While talking about her love for Fleabag, Taylor told Entertainment Weekly, “She makes you crack up, shocks you, and breaks your heart all in the span of a few minutes in that show.” Taylor later performed on the SNL episode which the Amazon Prime star hosted!

17. She wrote her own monologue for her appearance on Saturday Night Live in 2009, which doesn’t usually happen with celeb guests. Taylor clearly impressed the team with “Monologue Song (La La La).”

18. She’s been BFFs with Selena Gomez since their respective relationships with the Jonas Brothers. (ICYMI, SelGo even supported her best friend in Nov. 2021 when she returned to SNL to perform the 10-minute version of “All Too Well.”) Back in 2008, Taylor spent time with Joe Jonas, while Gomez dated his younger brother, Nick Jonas. The two quickly became close pals, and have remained tight to this day. Taylor even offered to be the flower girl in Gomez’s wedding to fiance Benny Blanco.

19. Remember the “redhead named Abigail” that Taylor references in “Fifteen,” her beloved song about growing up? Well, she and Taylor are still BFFs, too! Abigail Anderson is her name, and Taylor was a bridesmaid in her wedding in 2017.

20. She’s a godmother, holding that distinction for pal Jaime King‘s son Leo Thames and BFF Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds‘ daughters James, Inez and Betty.

21. Taylor has said that she may never perform her song “Soon You’ll Get Better,” which is about her mother’s cancer battle. During a Q&A session in Aug. 2019, as part of a SiriusXM Town Hall special, she shared, “It was hard to write, it’s hard to sing. It’s hard to listen to for me, but sometimes music is like that.” 

22. She doesn’t have X, formerly known as Twitter, on her phone. In an interview with Billboard, Taylor explained, “Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.”

23. She’s never been to therapy. “I talk to my mom a lot, because my mom is the one who’s seen everything,” Taylor told Rolling Stone in Sept. 2019. “God, it takes so long to download somebody on the last 29 years of my life, and my mom has seen it all.”

24. According to an interview, her favorite lyrics off of her Lover album are, “Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? / With every guitar string scar on my hand/I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover.”

25. Taylor is a billionaire! According to an Oct. 2024 report published by Bloomberg, after breaking records in the industry for over a decade, Taylor’s Eras Tour helped her achieve billionaire status.

26. The 2019 Netflix film, Someone Great, inspired her music, “I cried watching the movie. For about a week, I start waking up from dreams that I’m living out that scenario—that that’s happening to me,” she told Elvis Duran during an interview. “I’d have these lyrics in my head based on the dynamics of these characters and I went in the studio with Jack Antonoff.” The studio session led to the creation of Taylor’s song, “Death By a Thousand Cuts.”

27. She has a special place for her most emotional songs. From “All Too Well” to “The Archer,” the superstar reserves the fifth spot on her albums for a ballad.

28. She’s over hiding from cameras: In fact, she’s proudly supported boyfriend Travis Kelce at NFL games since 2023. “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she told Time. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

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