Some may love her and some may hate her, but it is undeniable that Taylor Swift has been busy this year. She dropped two albums, Folklore and the more recent Evermore. Along with writing quarantine songs, she has also been re-recording her old hits, like “Love Story,” which she recently released.

Re-recording ultimately isn’t that uncommon, in fact lots of artists re-mix or re-master their music over the decades. The difference is that Taylor Swift has been so vocal about the issue.

Why is she re-recording and why is she so vocal over the issue? Well, Swift’s entire music catalog ended up being sold in June of 2019 by Scooter Braun to Shamrock Holdings. This consisted of her debut in 2006 up to her Reputation album. Now someone else would profit off of her hard work. 

Swift says that she didn’t even know about the sale and wanted to own the songs herself but was having trouble gaining the rights.

Taylor Swift wrote in a blog post, “For years, I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future.”

The idea to re-record her old albums started circulating around in 2019. Swift ultimately decided to go that route because she wanted to own the rights to her past songs.

Swift started by re-recording “Love Story,” a fan favorite. She dropped in a music video that Ryan Renolds made. In the music video the love story is between the devil and the year 2020.