Taylor Swift has opened up about the emotional moment she was able to reunite with the masters of her first six albums following a very public, years-long dispute that led her to embark on a rerecording journey.
The pop superstar, who appeared on her NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast on Wednesday, teared up as she described getting a call from her mom, Andrea Swift, that the purchase was final.
“I just, like, very dramatically hit the floor — for real. Like, honestly, just started bawling my eyes out and I’m just like, just weeping,” said Swift, noting that she was in Kansas City — home to Travis Kelce’s Chiefs — at the time.
Kelce, as Swift recalled getting the news, softly sang the “It’s Been A Long Time Coming” intro from her record-setting Eras Tour.
In May, Swift announced that she bought back the rights to her early recordings, adding that she isn’t ruling out dropping the unreleased, rerecorded versions of her self-titled debut album and 2017′s “Reputation.”
The purchase arrived years after her first record label, Big Machine Records, sold the masters in 2019 to investor and record executive Scooter Braun, who has ties to longtime Swift adversaries Kim Kardashian and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. Swift once called it her “worst case scenario.”
Braun went on to sell the masters to Shamrock Capital, a private equity firm that Swift would later purchase them from.
“This changed my life. I can’t believe it still,” she said of reclaiming her masters.
“Instead of it being an intrusive thought that hurts me, it’s, ‘I can’t believe this happened.’ Like, ‘How lucky am I? How grateful am I?’”
Swift recalled wanting to share the news with Kelce, who was playing video games at the time, in a “normal way” but found herself “absolutely seething” instead.
“Just dead weight, losing all control,” Kelce replied.
“Had no power in my legs to support myself,” Swift added.
Moments later, Kelce emphasized that he was “so happy” for Swift and started crying when he got the news, as well.
“I know how much it burned you that you didn’t have… your creation,” he told Swift.
“And I just think doing it the right way, creating the fan base that you did the right way… you were eventually going to get it back somehow, some way because you’re always doing things with the right intentions.”
Swift is gearing up for the release of her 12th album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” the first since reuniting with the masters, on Oct. 3.
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She revealed that the album tackles what she was “going through offstage” during the Eras Tour and stressed that the songs come from the “most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place.”
