Hear a First Clip of Taylor Swift's 'Love Story' Re-Recording in Ryan Reynolds' Match.com Commercial

Alyssa Bailey
·4 min read
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From ELLE

Taylor Swift remains hard at work re-recording her first six albums—but is ready to share the first snippet of her new take on her earlier music. Swift kindly let her friend Ryan Reynolds use a clip from her "Love Story" re-recording in his Match.com commercial.

"Okay so while my new re-records are NOT done, my friend @VancityReynolds asked me if he could use a snippet of one for a LOLsome commercial he wrote so...here’s a sneak peak of Love Story! Working hard to get the music to you soon!!" Swift wrote on Twitter, retweeting Reynolds' commercial video. The song sounds almost exactly the same, but you can hear it for yourself below:

The masters for Swift's first six albums are owned by Big Machine Label, which she worked under during the first near-decade of her career. Big Machine and Swift's masters were acquired by Scooter Braun last June, which Swift described at the time as her "worst case scenario," in part due to "the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years." Braun has since sold Swift's masters to a private equity firm. Last month, Swift said that Braun still profits off of her old music and did not give her a fair chance to buy her masters back before selling the catalog to Shamrock Holdings.

Swift wrote:

I wanted to check in and update you guys. As you know, for the past year I’ve been actively trying to regain ownership of my master recordings. With that goal in mind, my team attempted to enter into negotiations with Scooter Braun.

Scooter’s team wanted me to sign an ironclad NDA stating I would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive, before we could even look at the financial records of BMLG (which is always the first step in a purchase of this nature). So, I would have to sign a document that would silence me forever before I could even have a chance to bid on my own work. My legal team said that this is absolutely NOT normal, and they’ve never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off 😬 He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.

A few weeks ago, my team received a letter from a private equity company called Shamrock Holdings, letting us know that they had bought 100% of my music, videos, and album art from Scooter Braun. This was the second time my music has been sold without my knowledge. The letter told me that they wanted to reach out before the sale to let me know, but that Scooter Braun had required that they make no contact with me or my team, or the deal would be off.

As soon as we started communication with Shamrock, I learned that under their terms Scooter Braun will continue to profit off my old musical catalog for many years. I was hopeful and open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock, but Scooter’s participation is a non-starter for me.

I have recently begun re-recording my older music, and it has already proven to be both exciting and creatively fulfilling. I have plenty of surprises in store 😎 I want to thank you guys for supporting me through this ongoing saga, and I can’t wait for you to hear what I’ve been dreaming up.

I love you guys, and I’m just gonna keep cruising, as they say.
Taylor

PS: For transparency and clarification, I have included the letter of response I sent on October 28, 2020 to the private equity group who purchased my music.

Swift was legally able to begin re-recording her music in November 2020. She will own all her re-recorded music (and all other music she makes) under her deal with her new record label, Republic Records.

She explained why doing this is so important to her during her August 2019 appearance on Good Morning America. "I’m very excited about it [re-recording the songs]," she said, "because I just think that artists deserve to own their work. I just feel very passionately about that. Yeah, it’s next year [I’ll start doing that]. It’s right around the corner. I’m going to be busy. I’m really excited."

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