Column: Fearless (Taylor's Version) marks emotional growth for Taylor Swift and her listeners

Andy Colwell“Taylor Swift Concert 010” by pennstatenews is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 Annetta Stogniew, news correspondentApril 21, 2021In November 2008, 19-year-old Taylor Swift ended her breakthrough album, Fearless, with the song “Change.” In a conversation with Country Aircheck that same year, Swift said she wrote the song “about being on a small record label, being a 16-year-old girl and having a lot of odds stacked up against all of us.”  The song was a tribute to Big Machine Label Group, or BMLG, a then-small Nashville record label that helped launch Swift’s career into superstardom. On April 9, nearly 13 years later, Swift released a re-recorded version, or “Taylor’s Version,” of the same album.  This time around, though, the song has taken on a very different meaning.  In July 2019, BMLG CEO Scott Borchetta sold the label to Swift’s longtime nemesis, Scooter Braun. As a result of the deal, Braun briefly owned the official recordings, or masters, to Swift’s first six albums, until he sold them in November of last year. However, Braun still stands to profit off of streams or licenses of Swift’s early music. Braun managed artists like Justin Bieber and Kanye West during their public conflicts with…
Read More