On Wednesday (June 21), Kelly Clarkson – who is promoting her new album, Chemistry, which was released on June 23 – sat down with Andy Cohen during a SiriusXM Town Hall special. During the interview, she detailed an encounter she had with music executive Scooter Braun nearly four years ago.
It all started when Scooter purchased Big Machine Records, the record label that signed Taylor Swift in 2005. The singer-songwriter would go on to record six studio albums under the label between 2006 and 2017. Swift lost the rights to her masters for those records the moment Scooter purchased the label.
@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 ????????♀️
— Kelly Clarkson ????????☀️ (@kellyclarkson) July 13, 2019
After Swift called it her ‘worst-case scenario,’ Kelly Clarkson shared some advice on Twitter. “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,” Clarkson wrote on July 13, 2019.
While it’s unclear if Taylor Swift saw the message, she did exactly as Kelly Clarkson advised and is now in the process of re-releasing her old music. “I knew it was important to her, so I thought, why don’t you just re-record them and your fans will support you? And literally she’s a genius,” Kelly told Andy Cohen.
She went on to call Taylor Swift ‘brilliant’ for not only re-recording her old music, but pairing it with her latest Eras Tour. And while everything turned out well for Swift, Kelly admitted that she thinks Scooter Braun took offense to her tweet in 2019 and ended up contacting her manager about the incident.
“He didn’t say anything to me. I think he called my manager at the time I heard and he was just like, 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 like, who had the rights.’ I didn’t even know all the information,” she said.
At the end of the day, Clarkson didn’t mean to offend Braun and admitted it had nothing to do with him. She also admitted that her comment didn’t influence Swift’s decision to re-record. “She’s brilliant, she would’ve come up with that on her own, and she maybe already had before I even tweeted it,” she said.
The Real Reason Why Scooter Braun Reached Out to Kelly Clarkson
On Friday (June 23), a source opened up to Entertainment Tonight about the incident between Scooter Braun and Kelly Clarkson. While Scooter was, in fact, reaching out to Kelly’s manager regarding the Taylor Swift masters, it wasn’t to confront Kelly about her tweet in 2019 – it was much more civil than that.
“Scooter was very publicly trying to get in touch with Taylor at the time to sell back her masters but she and her team were refusing a meeting,” the source told ET. When Kelly posted her tweet, Scooter tried to get in touch with Kelly’s manager to see if they could assist him in reaching out to Taylor as a friend.
“Scooter was told at the time that Kelly didn’t have a direct relationship so the conversation was dropped, and Kelly was likely never made aware that this was why Scooter was actually reaching out at the time,” the source continued – adding that both Kelly and Scooter have since cleared the air about the confusion.
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Kelly Clarkson might’ve had nothing to do with Taylor Swift re-recording her old tunes, but she has been busy in the studio herself. On June 23, Clarkson released her 10th studio album, Chemistry, where she sings about her relationship – including the good (marriage) and bad (divorce) – to Brandon Blackstock.