izzy

’Cruel Summer’ merch designs

but also fully

everything that happens in those rooms is literally the narrative of those albums.

Red room (red): her man makes her jealous/maybe cheating, the Taylor from the yellow room (fearless) is out of place, lots of friends

Black attic (rep): she holes up with just her lover and private time with nobody else

Pink room (lover): she's happy and close with him but also has happy time to herself here, a balance, happiness

Blue room (1989): when her fame spiked and her life became a fishbowl of voyeurs and any lover she had entered the fishbowl alongside her

Green room (debut): he's just putting up a frame showing they just began, she just plays instruments innocently enjoying her time with her lover, no real understanding of love yet

Purple (speak now): SHE IS JUST IN IT ALONE SINGING & PLAYING PIANO BECAUSE SHE WROTE IT BY HERSELF (they also have the cute dinner and dance in here, like the love she fantasized about on this album)

Yellow (fearless): playing board games and living life upsidedown - this one is the only one im not sure about? maybe that's the era where her life literally turned upsidedown from fame???

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. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums. 

Some fun facts about today’s news: I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. 

Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.

This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it. 

When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever. 

Thankfully, I am now signed to a label that believes I should own anything I create. Thankfully, I left my past in Scott’s hands and not my future. And hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.

I will always be proud of my past work. But for a healthier option, Lover will be out August 23. 

Sad and grossed out,

💔