My Favorite Taylor Swift Lyrics That Are (Maybe) About Scooter Braun

Weave your little webs of opacity, indeed.

Hi hi hi.

So………..certain corners of the internet (read: the ones I live on) lit up yesterday with news that a number of Scooter Braun’s high-profile clients were parting ways with the music manager. There’s been talk for a while now that Justin Bieber—who’s been with this grown man named Scooter for his entire career—had ended their relationship and it’s still a little unclear there. But now Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato have definitely also peaced out. See also: Idina Menzel/Adele Dazeem.

At first I thought, “Hmmm, is Scooter just getting out of the management business?” But if that was the case, why wouldn’t he be putting out that story instead of letting everyone speculate, right? Now, I’m kinda like, “Who has the new goods on this man and when can we read it? What the fuck did he do now?!?”

In case you forgot, Scooter’s investment group is the one that purchased the masters of Taylor Swift’s first five studio albums, via buying Big Machine, her original record label. The masters were the asset, natch.

There are a million explainers on the internet that get into the details of all that went down around this (and I’ve talked about it a bunch here before), but the main gist is that not only was Taylor not given the opportunity to buy them outright (which she wanted to do), they were sold to one of her biggest enemies: Scooter Braun. Never forget that he was Kanye’s manager during all that bullshit, adding to a long list of past nonsense that made her loathe him.

But, Taylor doesn’t get sad (at least she doesn’t stay that way)…she gets even. And the era of Taylor’s Versions was born, once she was contractually allowed to start re-recording in November 2020. I hate why Blondie had to do it, but we have been blessed as a fandom because of her tenacity and belief in an artist’s right to own their own work.

The timing of this latest round of Scooter news is immaculate given that four years ago at this very time, one Miss Taylor Alison Swift was in her Lover promo cycle and speaking publicly about how she was going to re-record her masters once she was freed up contractually. (Lover was the first album that was on her new label, where she made sure to secure the rights to all of her future work.)

The face she makes when his name is mentioned during this CBS Sunday Morning interview is a deeeeeeelight.

Truly, I’d give anything to be on Taylor and Selena’s text thread right now. Or any of the close friends group chats.