Speculation abounded about Taylor Swift earlier this week, after Variety reported that three sources allegedly close to the singer have confirmed she will be performing at the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show. Apple Music would go on to announce Sunday that Rihanna will headline next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, with no word on what happened with Swift.
TMZ reported that “sources with direct knowledge of the Super Bowl halftime show” informed them that officials approached Swift months ago about the midday show’s headliner. -time. The outlet claimed the pop star refused to perform until she had finished re-recording her first six albums.
Taylor Swift declined to perform at the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show.
She didn’t want to perform until she finished re-recording her first 6 albums (via @TMZ). pic.twitter.com/DDt7WZ11th
— Taylor Swift Facts (@TSwiftFTC) September 25, 2022
Big Machine Records originally owned Swift’s masters, and when Scooter Braun bought the company for $300 million in 2019, he effectively acquired his entire master catalog from his previous six records. Swift wrote in a 2019 tumblr Publish. “Instead, I was given the opportunity to sign back to Big Machine Records and ‘win’ one album at a time, one for each new one I turned in. I left because I knew that 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 my past behind.
As Swift said, she called buying Braun a “worst-case scenario” and blamed the fact that she hadn’t secured the rights to her work on being exploited because she was young. “That’s what happens when you sign a fifteen-year deal with someone for whom the term ‘fidelity’ is clearly just a contractual concept,” Swift wrote. And when this man says “Music has value”, he means that its value is indebted to the men who had no part in its creation.”
Swift has already re-recorded and released “Red” as well as “Fearless” to repossess the master recordings. Braun sold the master recordings in 2020 to an unknown investment fund. Currently, it all depends on the re-registration process.
On Sunday, Rihanna, 34, shared an image on Instagram Sunday claiming her appearance at next year’s NFL event. The “Umbrella” singer captioned the photo with a single dot, and her hand appears to be holding a soccer ball. Roc Nation then posted the image to their Instagram account, writing “Let’s Go” and tagging Rihanna and the NFL with the hashtag “#SBLVII”.