Taylor Swift reveals how she chose which albums to re-record first

11 December 2025, 13:01

Taylor Swift opened up about how not owning her masters left her “conflicted” and how she decided the order of re-recording her catalogue.

Taylor Swift has revealed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert which songs she decided to re-record first after her master recordings for her first six albums were purchased in 2019.

Over six years ago, Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group, gaining ownership of Taylor Swift’s first six album masters. Then, in a shocking turn of events, Scooter sold Taylor's masters to Shamrock for more than $300 million in 2020.

Seeking to regain control of her music, Taylor began re-recording those six albums and continued until earlier this year, when she bought her masters back.

She only re-recorded four of those six albums before she reveals she had brought back her masters and was now no longer going to continue re-recording. The two albums she hadn't re-recorded yet were her self titled album and Reputation.

Taylor has now revealed why she started re-recording and re-releasing with Fearless and Red, and didn't just re-release the albums in chronological order.

• Read more: Real reason why Taylor Swift is never seen at Chiefs games

It turns out Taylor is actually "stoked" about her re-records because she chose to start with the ones that she felt could be improved from their original recording.

She said: "I'm stoked about the re-records I got to do. I feel like I picked the ones first that I felt like, 'I could have sang that a little bit better'. Do you know what I mean?

"I feel like I actually improved upon some of the performances. So the way it all happened... man!"

Taylor then reflected on what it meant to receive her masters back, saying: "I used to have this very strange conflicted feeling of, like, I would hear the song 'Ready For It' and I would be like, 'Man this song goes so hard *imitates crying*'.

"You know what I mean? It's like, 'brm, brm, brm, tear'."

She added: "It was this strange conflicted feeling of like man those are my memories and that's when I was going through that. 'Cause a recording is such a snapshot of where you are in life."

At the end of the chat about her masters, she smiled and said: "Congratulations to me."

In the interview, Taylor also looked back on her "good year", having gotten engaged to Travis Kelce and regained control of her music.

She admitted that those were "two things that never could have happened", but she was "grateful", thanking her fans and noting that the revenue from the Eras Tour was the reason why she could buy her music back.

Earlier this year, when Taylor announced she had brought her masters back, she wrote an wrote an emotional letter to her fans.

In the letter, she wrote, "All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me." She called it her "greatest dream come true".

Read more about Taylor Swift here:

• All of Taylor Swift's cardigans released so far including new Life of a Showgirl version
• Why Taylor Swift didn't get any Grammy nominations for the 2026 awards
• Zara Larsson reveals how Taylor Swift helped her own her masters
• Taylor Swift praised by Jeff Lang's mother after emotional 'Ruin The Friendship' tribute
• Taylor Swift confirms six-episode Eras Tour docuseries coming to Disney+

Taylor Swift reveals her and Travis Kelce’s favourite song from ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’ | Capital

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