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On July 7 at midnight, Taylor Swift released her latest “Taylor’s Version” album–Speak Now. It originally came out in 2010. Taylor dated both Taylor Lautner and John Mayer while she was writing songs for that album, and Back To December is widely believed to be about Lautner. (I have also always maintained the belief that Swift cheated on Lautner when John Mayer came calling. My God, he’s gross.) While there are obviously some exes still on her sh-t list, namely Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor is friends with her ex Joe Jonas and apparently Taylor Lautner, too, who is married to a woman also named Taylor. It’s confusing. Anyway Taylor Lautner is part of Swift’s new music video for one of her ‘from the vault’ tracks, “I Can See You.” For 2010-era Taylor it’s quite the sexy little track. But the music video treatment is a bank heist where Lautner, Joey King, and Presley Cash conspire to break Swift out of a vault, carrying the Speak Now album with her. It’s clearly meant to be a metaphor for how Swift is taking control of her back catalog by re-recording her masters. It’s kind of a tonal mismatch for me between the mood of the song and the mood of the video, but it’s not my party, as they say. On Friday, Swift brought Lautner, Joey, and Presley onstage at her concert in Kansas City to celebrate the new music video. The Taylors had sweet things to say about each other.
It was Taylor times two at Taylor Swift’s Kansas City Eras Tour performance on Friday evening, when the singer brought ex-boyfriend and good friend Taylor Lautner onstage to celebrate his role in her new music video, “I Can See You.”
Joined by Joey King and Presley Cash, both of whom appeared in Swift’s 2011 music video for “Mean” and appear in the new video alongside Lautner, Swift told the crowd how influential Lautner, 31, was on her life back when the couple dated in 2009.
“He was a very positive force in my life when I was making the Speak Now album, and I want to say he did every single stunt that you saw in that music video,” Swift, now 33, told the massive audience at Arrowhead Stadium. “He and his wife have become some of my closest friends, and it’s very convenient because we all share the same first name.”
The new video shows Lautner, King, and Presley breaking into a vault to steal a Speak Now version of Swift back — a nod to Swift finally owning her own version of the album following the controversial sale of her masters to Scooter Braun.
Lautner echoed Swift’s sentiments, speaking to the singer in front of the crowd.
“I respect you so much. Not just for the singer you are, the songwriter, the performer — but truly for the human you are,” Variety reported. “You are gracious, humble, kind and I’m honored to know you.”
Taylor Lautner’s stunt work in “I Can See You” is pretty impressive, and the music video is cute. It’s not my favorite of the ‘from the vault’ tracks but most of them have been hit or miss for me across Taylor’s re-releases. I wasn’t too excited for this one anyway because of Taylor’s recent antics with Matt Healy–who she may or may not be seeing again on the down low, ugh. Taylor seems to crave chaos and bad boys–no tea no shade, I am that way too. But Healy crosses the line from guy-who-smokes-American-Spirits-and-never-calls-when-he-says-he-will, to flaming racist misogynist! And I just can’t understand why she’d go back to him or was with him in the first place. Back in ye olden days, Taylor Lautner was probably too reliable for her to stay interested, and then John Mayer, in between a breakup-makeup cycle with Jessica Simpson, made his move, like the Pied Piper. It’s sweet that the Taylors are friends now. I’ve been listening to Taylor Lautner’s podcast he does with his wife and he comes across as a compassionate, thoughtful dude.
photos credit: Getty and Andrew Shawaf / Pedro Andrade, PacificCoastNews.com / Avalon, Backgrid
So what do these re-releases mean against Scooter and the people who bought her catalog ? I am not too privy on the business aspect of the music .
Scooter & Co. make money when people listen to/use/license the original recordings. If everyone listens to/buys the rerecordings instead, Scooter doesn’t make any money. Taylor is refusing, as the writer/publisher, to allow the original recordings to be licensed out, for advertisements, movies, TV shows, etc. That’s a big part of buying the rights to the recordings. Scooter can repackage the original recordings as albums, but he can’t get money for putting the songs in a movie without Taylor’s permission as the writer. Taylor is rerecording the songs in the hopes that people listen to/buy the new recordings instead of the originals. She will also give permission to use the new recordings in movies/TV, and so any money that way will come to her and not Scooter.
@Kat – Scooter has already sold her masters to someone else. He tried to sell it back to Taylor and she said no, and he made a pretty big profit off of it. It’s no longer Scooter who benefits from the originals.
@Red, Scooter also disseminated lots of disinformation at the time. fx:
– Scooter tried to make Taylor sign an NDA before allowing her to make a proposal for the sale and if signed, Taylor would never say a bad word about Scooter even if her proposal got rejected. She said no after that because her lawyers told her that is highly unusual.
– Scooter still makes some profit from her original albums, which is why Taylor rejected to work with the new owners. She was open to work with them, instead of rerecording. But, since Scooter is still contractually making a profit, she rejected their offer.
– Yes, Scooter made a profit, but probably much less than he dreamed of while making the investment. Also, his reputation took a big dive.
Taylor as the person with the controlling songwriting credit on all her songs is able to put.out essentially cover songs of all the songs original recordings from the first six albums Scooter purchased. By Taylor making these re-recorded albums big moments she is converting people to listen to her new cover versions that are nearly identical, but often have improved sound quality thanka to current recording equipment.
Because Taylor has songwriting credit she has been able to block any licensing of her old music to movies, TV, or commercials. So her old songs only earn money off of streaming, but she is putting out these new versions for people to stream instead. It is working very well so far.
@SevenBlue I never said Taylor was in the wrong, I just said there was negotiation to sell it back to her. And actually, there were articles that just came out with the proposal, and the NDA never specifically stated that Taylor couldn’t say anything about Scooter. That was a lie.
Anyways, Scooter doesn’t own her masters anymore, and made hundreds of millions of dollars from it. He’s fine. Taylor’s fine. And Scooter never had a “good” reputation anyway, nor should he.
“there were articles that just came out with the proposal, and the NDA never specifically stated that Taylor couldn’t say anything about Scooter. That was a lie.”
Yes, Scooter again leaked “some” parts of the NDA, not all and he didn’t refute Taylor’s own statement from her account at the time. Now, since time passed
and people’s memories are fading, he is trying to muddy the waters. Taylor’s own lawyers made that statement at the time. Do you think high-paid lawyer would lie because Taylor asked them to?
I obviously don’t understand the legalities here because doesn’t scooter braun own the rights to those songs? If I said I was going to record all of Bob Dylan’s music wouldn’t I need permission?
Scooter & Co. own the rights to the original recordings, but Taylor owns the songs (written music and lyrics) as the songwriter/publisher. Six years after recording the originals, she can create new recordings of the songs she owns the publishing rights to, which is all of them. Taylor is mostly unique among big names in that she is the publisher of all of her songs, so she has the ability to rerecord them in a way that sounds exactly or close to exactly like the original. She does need permission from any cowriters, who so far have been willing. She is the only writer on all the songs on Speak Now, so she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to rerecord those.
Shamrock holdings (who bought the masters from Scooter) own the rights to those specific versions of the songs – since Taylor wrote them, she has half the ownership and can therefore block them from being played anywhere in favor of the Taylor’s Versions, and she can do whatever she wants with recording them again after a set amount of time. They can’t stop her from re-recording since she wrote them.
If I understand it correctly, Scooter Braun owns the masters, which are the album versions that companies can license for use in commercials, movies, etc., but she, as the writer of the songs, owns the publishing rights. Her masters were sold against her will so she negotiated a new deal with the new company to ensure she owns her masters, and then is creating a new set of masters so that anyone who wants one of her songs has the option of working directly with the artist-endorsed version, vs. the one she perceives as having been stolen by corporate raiders.
Scooter doesn’t own the masters anymore.
if you have the time, this article is the most comprehensive one imho. it’s quite interesting look at the behind the scenes of the music industry too. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/taylor-swift-catalog-sale-following-the-money/
“anyone who wants one of her songs has the option of working directly with the artist-endorsed version, vs. the one she perceives as having been stolen by corporate raiders.”
There is even no option because Taylor is rejecting usage of original masters. As I understand, in music industry, licensing to movies, shows brings most of the money. Since Taylor, as the songwriter of the songs, is rejecting the usage of the original recordings, they have no choice but use Taylor’s versions.
Also, Scooter doesn’t own original masters anymore, he sold them. But, he is still making a profit off of them, which was why Taylor also rejected to work with new owners.
Can I just say “guy who smokes American Spirits” is just the best shorthand for those kinds of aholes that some of us lost our minds over in our 20’s? Perfection.
It’s one of the better FTV tracks I think, Castles Crumbling with Hayley Williams is also very good. I’d never listened to the album all the way through before the Taylor’s Version came out (it was a good soundtrack for mowing the lawn with noise cancelling headphones on last Friday!), it’s a great album and her songwriting skills on this album are stellar.
It’s sweet that her and Lautner are good friends now, he seems like a good guy. She’s so much better off surrounding herself with people like him and Selena Gomez than douche-canoes like Healy.
Dude must really need the work.
Mmmm…maybe, but also, I just thought he was hot for the first time in my life. Impressive skills. Maybe some action franchise will come calling. Not a bad way to get your name back out there.
A few months ago, Taylor posted some pics on Instagram I believe, and fans dragged him for “looking old”. It was really mean. I’m guessing this was redemption?
If that can be achieved by selling one’s soul to the devil, then yes.
Bad boys ? I mean Taylor Lautner is a sweetheart. Joe Jonas doesn’t have a bad reputation either (other than dumping her through text lol). Joel isn’t a bad boy either. Harry Styles is known for being really nice. Seems Matty might be her real first bad boy?
Eh, John Mayer? Also while not a bad boy per se probably Calvin Harris in Taylor’s books goes as a bad boy cause he called her out in public for her BS.
I forgot about John Mayer. Is he really a “bad boy” though? What has he done? I don’t really follow him so don’t know.
@ME. Well, John Mayer is racist – he once called his dick a white supremacist and was using N-words.
He dated Jennifer Love Hewitt and mocked her during some stand-up thing, he dated Jessica Simpson and talked about her in quite degrading terms after in interviews, also he provided her drugs when she herslef struggled with alcoholism. Mayer broke up with her like nine times, and always via email. She also said he would try to control or “win” conversations with her, and that he regularly made her feel inadequate.
Mayer himself was an alcoholic for a while, and only later got sober, but he still smokes weed and pot.
Once he also threatened to “forcefully sodomize” an interviewer’s editor. Another time he said about himself: “I am the new generation of masturbator” and other stuff like that.
After he dated Taylor Swift and she wrote a song about him, he called her songwriting cheap in some interview.
That’s not everything, but it would give you an idea.
He always was considered to be the worst of Taylor Swift’s exes, well, until Matty Healy came into the picture.
@ Plasma
Wow thanks for the info. I didn’t know about all that. I knew he said something about Jessica Simpson…I do remember some sort of story…but I didn’t know about the racist stuff. Why the f*ck did Taylor date him? That’s two racist boyfriends that we know of now.
@me Taylor Swift was 19 and John Mayer was 32 and at the height of his career. Everyone wanted to date John Mayer then (and he hadn’t said the dick thing yet). Also she was 19 and he was 32.
@Lisa
Thanks for the info.
Cute fact about TL’s stunt work in the video — it’s the same choreography from an SNL monologue where he’s showing what he wished he’d done when Kanye infamously took the stage. It’s a nice call back to that. He’s getting to essentially defend her the way he had wanted to.
Also, Taylor L, the wife, sort of pulled a Hailey Bieber, but better. There are pics of her as a fan with Twilight posters and one of her and Taylor at a concert I’m assuming. Now she’s married and friends with. #Mastermind.
That just made it worse 🤢
Your comments are delightful. /s
Taylor kinda is on PR demage control ever since her breakup with Joe Alwyn and her dating Matty Healy didn’t go very well and she got backlash.
Also as far as I remember last year she tried to nominate another one of her videos about another ex of hers for Oscar but failed big time – and people were clowning her for it and saying how she was still bitter and salty about that ex dumping her years ago.
So yeah, she needed some PR move to try to paint herself in better light this time.
Come on now, the latest re lease of midnights was a clear stunt, but this sort of thing isn’t a stunt tbh, it’s just classic Taylor knowing what will grab people’s attention.
Taylor liiiiivvvves for fan service and cameos (especially since Lautner had become pretty vocal about Swift in his podcast), this video would have existed with or without Matty or Joe.
I believe this was filmed before news about Matty broke too, I recall a pap pic of this video shoot of her holding that frame and running out, and people were talking about how she is jumping into work to take her mind off Joe.
I’m not a huge fan of the song but the video is fun. She’s pretty good at writing and directing her own videos.
She really is good at it isn’t she? I wonder if she’ll produce/direct a movie one day. She’s also really good at storytelling.
A deal has already been announced for her to write/direct a film with Searchlight.
I thought it was kind of nice for her to do a shout-out for Lautner, who seems like a genuinely nice guy. And his wife also seems nice. He could use the profile boost.
Snooze. I see the short-term memory has failed… she’s still vile. I don’t care what business shenanigans another scumbag in the industry did. She’s vile and her focus is her wallet and her creepy adoring “relationship” with rabid fans.
I live in Kansas City and have several coworkers who were lucky enough to get tickets. There were tons of Taylor Swift adjacent activities around town – bakeries with “Eras” cookies, a town in North KC temporarily renaming its Swift Street to Swift Street (Taylor’s Version), popup bars, etc. Apparently, her 2 show visit was making the businesses in the city something like $46M. Lots of them small, women-owned businesses, too.
One thing I noticed was the amazingly positive energy with all of it. The traffic helicopter reporter even commented at how orderly everyone was as they entered the stadium. At the end of the week, I went from someone who is vaguely aware of Taylor Swift to someone who really respects her business savvy and ability to connect with her fans.
Good to know, I like your perspective, thanks.