Taylor Swift’s Taylor’s Version series of re-recorded albums have been a massive hit, and fans might have Kelly Clarkson to thank for that: Back in 2019, she tweeted, “@taylorswift13 just a thought, U should go in & re-record all the songs that U don’t own the masters on exactly how U did them but put brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions. I’d buy all of the new versions just to prove a point.”
Clarkson doesn’t want to take credit for the idea to re-record the albums, though, as she told Andy Cohen in an interview, “She’s brilliant, she would’ve come up with that on her own, and she maybe already had before I even tweeted it.”
She also spoke about how, her perspective, it looked like Scooter Braun, who bought Swift’s master recordings, may have taken offense to her suggestion. Clarkson said:
“I think Scooter took offense to it, because we ran into each other, and I think he reached out at the time to my manager. I was like, ‘It wasn’t anything against him.’ I just… when she came out and said that and I heard about it, I was like, ‘Whatever. Re-record them. Your fans will support you.’ Uh, they did! She has like every top record right now in the charts.
He didn’t say anything to me. I think he called my manager at the time, I heard, and I don’t know what happened or what was said, but I think he thought I was attacking him. I was like, ‘I honest to God didn’t even realize who had the [rights].’ I didn’t even know all the information. All I heard was, ‘Man, I really want to own,’ and I was like, ‘Man, that song… She writes everything. It’s so important to her. She’s a businesswoman.’ It felt wrong that she didn’t have the opportunity, right? That’s the thing: If you have the opportunity and you choose to not pay that much money, that’s one thing, but to not have the opportunity to own something that is really important to you [is another].”
Clarkson, by the way, has a new album, Chemistry, out today (June 23).
Check out the interview clip above.
Kelly Clarkson is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.