As Taylor Swift's Eras tour continues, a new documentary about her battle with record executive Scooter Braun is dropping – and we're ready for all the tea.
The news that Braun had bought her label, and therefore the master recordings from 2006 debut album to 2017's Reputation, was a huge controversy that hit T-Swift and her fans hard. The executive is known for having discovered Justin Bieber and has worked with stars such as Ariana Grande and Kanye West. It was a rather emotional feud, with Taylor taking to the Internet at the time to describe what what it had meant to her.
“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,” she wrote in a Tumblr post back in 2019. “Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.”
They say it's Karma.
“This is my worst case scenario,” she wrote. “This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.”
She also called out both Scooter and the founder of her former label Big Machine, Scott Borchetta. "He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”
As a result, in 2021 Taylor started re-recording her albums, hence treating us to “Taylor's Version” of Fearless, Speak Now, Red and 1989 thus far. This move was a way to reclaim the creative rights over her back catalogue and career.
Here's everything we know about the Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Bad Blood documentary.
What is Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Bad Blood about?
Featuring commentary from legal experts, journalists and those close to both Swift and Braun, the documentary will be split into two one-hour segments, each tackling claims made from both sides.
Swift has argued that her recordings were sold without her being consulted, with her being cut of the sale itself so she didn't have a chance to bid, and without the offer for her to buy them back. There have been arguments that her father knew about the purchase before she did, which have been refuted.
Scooter claims to have received death threats from Taylor Swift fans because of the issue and, according to a synopsis for the documentary, insists that Taylor “refused to negotiate and instead incited a public feud by pitting her fan base against him”.
The documentary will also explore gender inequalities and dynamics in the music industry and the sheer might of fandom, particularly Taylor Swift's.
Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Bad Blood release date
It will drop on streaming service Discovery+ on Friday 21 June.
Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Bad Blood trailer
Of course, it's a dramatic one. The documentary speaks to a range of sources from both sides of the conflict, with one calling the entire situation a “betrayal of an artist and of a woman in a male dominated world”, while another insists “this was a business deal and it wasn’t some bullying attack”.
