Last night, Taylor Swift posted a message to her social media wherein she claimed that Scott Borchetta (the former head of Big Machine) and Scooter Braun (who now owns Big Machine) were stopping her from performing her old songs at the American Music Awards. She wants to sing a medley of old and new songs when she receives her AMA Artist of the Decade award, and she claimed they were stopping her. She also claimed that they were stopping her from using her old songs in a Netflix documentary which she has been filming for the past two years. As I said earlier, if all of Taylor’s claims are true, then it’s awful and I feel sorry for what’s happening to her. But as I also said, Taylor has a history of misrepresenting a lot of stuff so that she’ll always be the victim, always and forever. I just thought that there was more to the story and I was interested to see if Braun and Borchetta would release any statements or pushbacks. They did. This was posted on Big Machine’s site:

As Taylor Swift’s partner for over a decade, we were shocked to see her tumblr statements yesterday based on false information. At no point did we say Taylor could not perform on the AMAs or block her Netflix special. In fact, we do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere. Since Taylor’s decision to leave Big Machine last fall, we have continued to honor all of her requests to license her catalog to third parties as she promotes her current record in which we do not financially participate.

The truth is, Taylor has admitted to contractually owing millions of dollars and multiple assets to our company, which is responsible for 120 hardworking employees who helped build her career. We have worked diligently to have a conversation about these matters with Taylor and her team to productively move forward. We started to see progress over the past two weeks and were optimistic as recently as yesterday that this may get resolved. However, despite our persistent efforts to find a private and mutually satisfactory solution, Taylor made a unilateral decision last night to enlist her fanbase in a calculated manner that greatly affects the safety of our employees and their families.

Taylor, the narrative you have created does not exist. All we ask is to have a direct and honest conversation. When that happens, you will see there is nothing but respect, kindness and support waiting for you on the other side. To date, not one of the invitations to speak with us and work through this has been accepted. Rumors fester in the absence of communication. Let’s not have that continue here. We share the collective goal of giving your fans the entertainment they both want and deserve.

–Big Machine Label Group

[From Big Machine]

“Taylor made a unilateral decision last night to enlist her fanbase in a calculated manner that greatly affects the safety of our employees and their families.” Um, WOW. I mean, Taylor really did do that – she basically asked her fans to cyberbully or real-life bully Borchetta and Braun for daring to… make a business deal that pissed her off. That’s really all it was at the end of the day. It was business and she was mad about it. And Big Machine’s statement made a point that I was wondering about – how would it even serve their interests to refuse to the rights to her to perform her music? It wouldn’t. As for all of the stuff about Taylor refusing to meet with anyone from Big Machine, I believe that too. Her Rolling Stone interview was the portrait of a woman who twists herself in knots to avoid actually sitting down with business associates and trying to figure out WTF is actually happening. She’s stuck in this little world where Big Bad Businessmen are making all of these moves JUST to hurt her. And that’s not the way any of this works.

Don’t know what else to do pic.twitter.com/1uBrXwviTS

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) November 14, 2019

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and WENN.