Just hours after Taylor Swift announced she was dropping a surprise new album at midnight, her arch-enemy Scooter Braun took to Twitter to tease that his client Justin Bieber might releasing new music.
Taylor Swift‘s fans are crying foul that her arch-nemesis Scooter Braun is trying to steal her thunder after she announced she’ll be dropping her eighth studio album on July 24 at midnight. Swifties rejoiced that the 30-year-old singer is helping save the mess that 2020 has been by delivering 16 fresh songs on her new Folklore album. But music manager Scooter — who infamously bought the rights to Taylor’s first six albums in June 2019 — seemed to be trying to divert attention away from Tay and onto his longtime client Justin Bieber, with a teaser tweet about new music from the 26-year-old “Yummy” singer.
While Taylor was still in the top 10 Twitter trends about the release of her new album — as well as a music video for the song “Cardigan” — Scooter tweeted to Justin, “New tour…maybe a new album @justinbieber?” with smiley face emojis. While Justin’s team had announced that his 2020 summer stadium tour — which had been cancelled due to the coronavirus — had locked down dates for a 45 city 2021 summer tour, fans took Scooter’s “new album” remark as totally trolling Taylor.
Many simply wrote ‘FOLKLORE TONIGHT” or “CARDIGAN TONIGHT” in the comments of his tweet. A Tay fan named @divayall told Scooter and Justin, “don’t let this distract u from the fact that folklore is coming out tonight and that Taylor is artist of the decade, while user @afterglowbrandon shared with Scooter the dictionary meaning of “desperation,” as being “a state of despair, typically one which results in rash or extreme behavior.”
Taylor’s fans were overjoyed when hours earlier on July 23 she announced via her social media, “Surprise. Tonight at midnight I’ll be releasing my 8th studio album, folklore; an entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into.”
She explained that she wrote and recorded the songs while in home isolation earlier this year and that, “Before this year I probably would’ve overthought when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time. But the times we’re living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed. My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world. That’s the side of uncertainty I can get on board with.” She also debuted a new aesthetic, with black and white photos, posing in the woods and going with a decidedly earthier tone than the technicolor dream explosion that was her 2019 Lover album.
Taylor’s new album will be going up against one of her other rivals, Kanye West. The 43-year-old rapper turned Christian musician is promising to drop his new LP Donda with Child, and has been teasing tracks written in black magic marker on orange paper for the past few days on Twitter. Though with Ye’s recent series of erratic tweets and his family’s worries about his mental health — coupled with his being notorious for not hitting release deadlines — it remains to be seen if listeners will in fact get his new music at midnight.
This will be the second album that Taylor will own the master copy of, following Lover. She sadly lost the rights to her first six albums she recorded under Big Machine Records when owner Scott Borchatta sold the master copies to Scooter’s company Ithaca Holdings for roughly $300 million.
When Taylor found out who bought her life’s work, she took to Tumblr on June 30, 2019 and wrote, “This is my worst case scenario. I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.” Taylor added, “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.” Taylor left Big Machine in 2018 for Universal Music Group, which has allowed her to keep control her master recordings.