After her masters were sold to an old foe, Swift’s re-recording project starts with her 2008 opus on the teen-girl experience – an apposite contrast to venal male industry executives
In 2012, Def Leppard announced in robust style that they would be rerecording their biggest hits. It was provoked by a dispute with their former record label, designed to “punch them in the bollocks”, said frontman Joe Elliott. “We fucking built that company. We built their penthouse sushi bar, wherever it may be, and they just treated us like shit.”
This is a sentiment with which Taylor Swift may empathise. She hasn’t actually threatened harm to the testicles of her former label boss Scott Borchetta – and Scooter Braun, the manager who bought the master rights to her first six albums, then sold them to an investment fund for an estimated $300m – but if an album ever seemed like a musical equivalent of a painful knee to the groin then Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is it.
