The story starts when it was hot and it was summer… the summer of 2005 that is.

Taylor Swift signed with Big Machine Records at the age of 16 as an up-and-coming country musician. 

Under Big Machine, Swift recorded six albums until her contract was up in 2018. The contract with Big Machine states that the record label owns the albums Swift recorded while under the contract. 

Swift signed with Universal’s Republic Records, and made sure she would be the owner of her masters instead of the record label. This, however, did not change the fact that Big Machine still owns her first six masters. 

In 2019, Big Machine was bought out by a big-name music manager named Scooter Braun, who owns Ithaca Holdings and manages artists such as Justin Bieber and Kanye West. 

Braun sold Swift’s masters out from under her shortly after to a company called Shamrock Holdings for 300 million dollars. Due to this, all the revenue from Swift’s first six albums went to Braun instead of her. 

Swift addressed the sale of her masters on social media, and even spoke about it in her documentary “Miss Americana.” She soon announced that she would be re-recording her first six albums so she could own her music again. 

 “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work,” Swift said in a 2021 post on Instagram. 

Not only is Swift releasing the re-recorded albums, but she also released what she calls “vault tracks.”

These vault tracks are songs that were originally written for each album, but did not make the cut. Now that she is the owner of the albums, she can release the unreleased songs from the vault. 

The first of her re-recordings, which are referred to as “Taylor’s Version,” was her second studio album “Fearless.” 

“Fearless Taylor’s Version” was released on April 8, 2021. 

Wasting no time, Swift released “Red Taylor’s Version,” originally her fourth studio album, on Nov. 12, 2021.

Swift took some time between re-records and released her tenth studio album “Midnights” in October of 2022. 

On July 7, 2023, amidst her stadium tour “The Eras Tour,” Swift released “Speak Now Taylor’s Version,” which was originally her third studio album. 

At the last show of the U.S. leg of The Eras Tour, Swift announced that “1989 Taylor’s Version” would be released Oct. 27, 2023. 

The albums that are left for her to re-record are “Reputation,” her sixth studio album, and her self-titled album, “Taylor Swift,” her debut album. 

No announcements have been made regarding when these re-recordings will be released, but Swifties have ideas on a possible timeline. 

For more information about Taylor Swift’s re-recorded albums, visit her website at www.taylorswift.com or her Instagram @taylorswift.