Taylor Swift is currently readying the release of her third re-recorded album, and Kelly Clarkson recently revisited a moment from 2019 when she suggested Swift take her music into her own hands.
Fans of Swift are well aware that the superstar is re-recording her albums in an effort to own her masters after they were sold to music executive Scooter Braun in 2019. As it turns out, one of the first people who suggested Swift take on this project was Kelly Clarkson. When the drama surrounding the ownership of Swift's first six albums was unfolding in 2019, Clarkson — who wasn't privy to all the details of the situation — tweeted a simple suggestion: Why doesn't Taylor re-record her old music?
The tweet read, "@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."
On a recent episode of SiriusXM's Radio Andy, host Andy Cohen revisited this tweet, and Clarkson revealed that Braun saw the statement as a slight to him.
"I think Scooter took offense to it ... I was like, 'It wasn't anything against him," Clarkson explains. "When she came out and said that and I heard about it, I was like, 'Whatever! Re-record them. Your fans will support you.' Uh, they did."
"I think he thought I was attacking him," she adds. "I, honest to God, didn't even realize who had the rights. I didn't even know all the information."
After Clarkson's tweet, Swift did in fact begin re-recording her albums, and she topped the charts and broke records with her new versions of Fearless and Red. As for Clarkson, she doesn't take any credit for giving Swift the idea for re-recording. She believes Swift, whom she calls a "genius" businesswoman, would have come to that conclusion on her own.
"She would have come up with that on her own. She may already had before I tweeted it," Clarkson says.
Swift will release Speak Now (Taylor's Version), which is the re-recorded version of her 2010 album, on July 7.
