Taylor Swift CAN be nominated for her re-recorded albums from next year’s Grammy Awards

It looks like Taylor Swift may have scored another chance to add to her trophy collection.

The 31-year-old country singer turned pop star is eligible for Grammy Award nominations on her upcoming rerecorded albums, a Recording Academy spokesperson recently told Billboard.

Swift has vowed to make new versions of her early albums after superstar manager Scooter Braun bought and then sold her master recordings.

According to a Recording Academy spokesperson, “Under current admission guidelines, the new performances and albums would be eligible if recorded within the past five years.”

However, they added that “none of the older songs would qualify for songwriting awards.”

Although Swift’s self-titled 2006 debut album was a hit, peaking at number 5 on the Billboard 200 album chart, she began her series of re-recordings with her second album, Fearless.

Last week, she released a new version of her single Love Story, renamed Love Story (Taylor’s Version), which closely follows the original recording and even features many of the original studio musicians and touring band members.

In addition to the new versions of the original album tracks, Swift has said it contains six unreleased bonus tracks that were never included on the original release.

According to the Recording Academy, those songs are also eligible for awards and may even qualify for songwriting accolades as long as they have never been officially released elsewhere.

It’s unclear if the Shake It Off singer will be handing out more singles in the coming weeks, but fans will have to wait until April 9 to hear the full version of her re-recorded Fearless album.

While she didn’t mention a release date in her initial announcement of the project, eagle-eyed Swifties noted that some letters appeared to spell “ APRIL NINTH ” with a random capital, and a representative later confirmed that the album arrived April 9. .

Fearless was a hit at the Grammys, winning four awards, including the prestigious Album of the Year trophy.

While Taylor has retained the publishing rights to her songs and makes money every time someone streams them or buys a download or a CD of the compositions, she didn’t have the actual master recordings, which were owned by her record label Big Machine.

In 2019 she signed a new agreement with Universal Music Group that gives her the rights to all future masters, including her surprise albums Folklore and Evermore, as well as 2019’s Lover.

However, she has no control over her hugely popular albums Red and 1989, which signaled her towards pop music and away from country stardom.

Shortly after she signed her new agreement in 2019, Braun bought her old Big Machine label in a $ 300 million deal that had the bonus of getting the masters of her first six albums.

The singer complained that the purchase “robbed me of my life’s work” by “the hands of someone trying to dismantle it,” supposedly referring to Braun’s work with Swift’s longtime nemesis Kanye West.

She claimed she approached the label about buying her masters, but she was turned down, as Big Machine would reportedly only give her the rights to her masters if she agreed to record more albums for the label.

Even then, for every new album she produced, she would only have regained the rights to one album at a time.

Taylor’s new version of Fearless will not be eligible for awards at the Grammy Awards ceremony in March, but she could be considered for the 2022 awards ceremony.