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reputation (Taylor's Version)

Date unconfirmed

This article is about the re-recording. For the original album, see reputation (2017).

reputation (Taylor’s Version) is the upcoming re-recording of Taylor’s sixth studio album, reputation (2017). It will be released by Republic Records but has yet to be announced.

Taylor Swift. It’s a name that – in 2017 – had reached monumental levels of fame, or rather, infamy. For every headline that praised Taylor, there were nine more that tore her to pieces. From her notorious dating history to her high profile feuds, no part of her life had been untouched. With reputation, Taylor finally fought back. As she proudly declared on the album’s lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do“: “Sorry, the Old Taylor can’t come to the phone. Why? ’Cause she’s dead!” One began to wonder whether the Taylor of yesteryears was actually gone. With reputation, she created a larger-than-life caricature of the petty, vindictive snake she had been made out to be. By album’s end though, she assessef her crumbling empire and tattered reputation, discovering redemption in love. Because in the end, reputation isn’t so much a rebirth as it is a retreat inward:

«The one-two punch, bait-and-switch of reputation is that it was actually a love story. It was a love story in amongst chaos. All the weaponized sort of metallic battle anthems were what was going on outside. That was the battle raging on that I could see from the windows, and then there was what was happening inside my world — my newly quiet, cozy world that was happening on my own terms for the first time...It’s weird, because in some of the worst times of my career, and reputation, dare I say, I had some of the most beautiful times — in my quiet life that I chose to have. And I had some of the most incredible memories with the friends I now knew cared about me, even if everyone hated me. The bad stuff was really significant and damaging. But the good stuff will endure. The good lessons — you realize that you can’t just show your life to people.»

Taylor Swift

Background

As per her contract with her former label Big Machine Records, Taylor released six studio albums between 2006 and 2017. In November 2018, her contract with the label expired; she hence withdrew from Big Machine and signed a new recording deal with Republic Records, a division of Universal Music Group, which secured her the rights to own the masters of the new music she would release going forward.

In 2019, American businessman Scooter Braun and his company Ithaca Holdings acquired the Big Machine Label Group. As part of the acquisition, ownership of the master recordings to Taylor’s first six studio albums, including reputation, transferred to Braun. Taylor immediately denounced Braun’s purchase of the label and announced that she would re-record her first six studio albums, to own the masters to her life’s work herself. In November 2020, Braun sold the masters to Shamrock Holdings, an American private equity firm owned by the Disney estate, under the conditions that Braun and Ithaca Holdings would continue to financially profit from the albums. Taylor began re-recording her first six studio albums in November 2020.