Is Scooter Braun ‘Evil’ or Is Taylor Swift Just Picking a Fight?
Scooter Braun has gained some allies in the recording industry, but he's made more enemies. | Source: (i) JStone/Shutterstock.com (ii) AFP/ Angela Weiss. Image edited by CCN.com.
- Scooter Braun recently sold Taylor Swift’s masters for $300 million.
- Swift quickly tweeted her discontentment with Braun.
- Her feud with Braun goes back years, but is he truly a bad guy, or is Swift just in a bad situation?
Scooter Braun and Taylor Swift have found no resolutions to their beef. And things are only getting worse.
Swift took to Twitter after Braun reportedly sold her masters for upwards of $300 million . She paints Braun as a greedy, self-centered record executive.
Is she right?
Scooter Braun Goes to the Bank
Scooter Braun and his company (Ithaca Holdings LLC) sold the master rights to Taylor Swift’s first six albums to Shamrock Holdings.
Taylor Swift dropped a massive tweet bomb about the deal today:
The sale, which was reportedly worth over $300 million, did not sit well with Swift. In fact, she refused to cooperate with Shamrock because it benefited Scooter Braun.
She said:
I simply cannot in good conscience bring myself to be involved in benefiting Scooter Braun’s interests directly or indirectly.
Shots fired, again.
Swift had made it known that she intended to buy back her masters. But, according to Swift, Braun wanted her to sign an NDA before she’d be allowed to start negotiating a buyout for her masters. Essentially, he made her promise not to speak ill of him before they could even start conversations.
Who does that?
Braun Has a History With Taylor Swift
In 2019, when Scooter Braun acquired Taylor Swift’s label Big Machine Label Group, Swift called it her “worst-case scenario .” In a Tumblr post, she said Braun subjected her to “incessant, manipulative bullying.” She claimed Braun even bullied her through his various friends and former clients, like Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
Fellow musicians, including Halsey and Iggy Azalea, stood up for Swift with the hashtag #WeStandWithTaylor, while others, like Justin Bieber, allied with Braun.
Scooter Braun Is…Evil?
Taylor Swift is not alone in her hatred for Scooter Braun. Swift’s friend and former Braun client, Todrick Hall, took an even bolder stance. He called Braun an “evil person” who’s greedy and “homophobic.”
In 2016, Ariana Grande fired Scooter Braun, and he responded by passively-aggressively commenting on how he wouldn’t comment on it. Then he called her ex-boyfriend Big Sean, “sh**ty.”
In 2019, Justin Bieber protogé Madison Beer told BUILD LDN that Scooter Braun abandoned her:
I was signed to everything: I had Justin Bieber in my music video, I had like, TV show being planned, movies being planned, this and that, and then out of nowhere, it was all gone. No more Scooter, no more Justin, no more labels. Not even my lawyer was the same. Everyone left me, everyone gave up.
But this wouldn’t be the first time Taylor Swift has been accused of playing the victim.
While we don’t have enough evidence to draw a hard conclusion against Scooter Braun, the testimony does not stack up in his favor. And the NDA hints that there’s probably fire under that smoke.
He’s angered Taylor Swift, who, despite her flaws, people generally accept as a nice person. While “evil” might be a stretch, we find it easy to side with Team Taylor.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.
