Taylor Swift's row with Big Machine is about so much more than the music

The pop star is embroiled in a battle over her back catalogue amid claims her old label is preventing her from performing it at the American Music Awards. Roisin O'Connor understands why Swift is taking it so personally

Taylor Swift at the 2018 American Music Awards (REUTERS)

Taylor Swift doesn’t know what else to do. The biggest pop star on the planet is, she claims, being prevented from performing her own music by the men who own the rights to it. Clearly at her wits' end, she has posted a lengthy Twitter message exposing the battle she is facing ahead of the forthcoming American Music Awards.

In August this year, it was announced that Scooter Braun, who manages stars including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and formerly Kanye West, had acquired Swift’s entire catalogue (not including her latest album, Lover), after his company took over her former label Big Machine Label Group. Swift responded with an open letter saying she was “sad and grossed out” that a man she accused of bullying her “for years” now owned her life’s work, songs she had written in her childhood bedroom from the age of 14. Braun and Big Machine founder and president Scott Borchetta knew what they were doing, she said. “Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”

Up to 80 per cent of BMLG’s revenue reportedly comes from Swift’s music. If she re-records her music next year, as she is planning to do, the catalogue the label owns will become virtually worthless once she replaces it with the new recordings in-store and on streaming platforms. (Swift says that Big Machine told her she would be allowed to perform her old songs only if she agreed not to re-record them in the future – something she is categorically not willing to do – and only if she affirmed she will not speak negatively about the company.)

In a carefully worded statement, Big Machine has since denied saying Swift could not perform at the AMAs or that it would block her Netflix special: “We do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere.” But this isn’t what Swift accused the label of doing. It has been implied that Swift cannot legally re-record her back catalogue until next year (many label contracts state that re-recording songs is prohibited until “the later of two years following the expiration of the agreement or five years after the commercial release”). So, it seems feasible that Borchetta and BMLG could make some tenuous claim that a live broadcast on the AMAs, and the recorded clips that would no doubt follow on YouTube and TV networks, would contravene that stipulation. In response to BMLG’s denial, Swift’s team doubled down, insisting that Borchetta had “flatly denied the request for both American Music Awards and Netflix”.

What many are failing to see is that this situation is about so much more than who owns whose music. It’s about the exhausting lengths women must go to simply to justify their status to a world that resents women in positions of power. After news of the BMLG/Braun deal broke in August, Swift posted a screenshot of a photo shared by Justin Bieber, in which he is pictured with his manager Braun and Kanye West. Bieber originally posted the image in 2016, at the height of Swift’s feud with West. Looking back on it now, it comes across as a group of men gleeful at getting one-over on a woman who was, it seems fair to argue, on her way to becoming more powerful, rich and successful than any one of them.

At the same time, Swift was undergoing a backlash for being “fake”, for being “too nice”, and for being “calculating” when it came to her dealings in the music industry. If a woman doesn’t smile, if she doesn’t fall over herself to defer to a man in a conversation, she’s labelled a bitch – cold, aloof, standoffish. I’ve seen it happen first-hand, to myself, to my peers, and to the artists I write about. Business savvy for men is a sign of good strategy, of ruthlessness (a good thing) – for women it’s viewed as calculating, underhand, devious. Women can work hard, sure, but they have to be nice, charming, flirtatious, deferential.

“They were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake,” Swift recalled in a recent Guardian interview, of the fallout against her. “And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” For most women, the experience of a man trying to take away something they've worked for is all too familiar. And it causes a kind of deep-rooted, irreversible trauma. You feel violated, sick, stressed. It unlocks something primal, the need to defend yourself, your territory, the thing that makes you want to get up each morning feeling inspired and excited for what’s next. And then you’re told to “calm down”.

“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/ Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” Swift sings on “The Man”, a song from Lover. When she performs it at the AMAs later this month – and I have no doubt that she will – I hope every man in that room, and everyone in the industry, is listening.