Scooter Braun Says the Taylor Swift Feud Made Him a ‘Villain’ Overnight — ‘I Think I’ve Met Her Three Times in My Life’
Scooter Braun broke his public silence in a new 90-minute podcast interview, saying he barely knew Taylor Swift before the masters dispute made him famous as her enemy — and that he never had a real conversation with her.
- Scooter Braun — former manager to Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Kanye West, and the central figure in Taylor Swift’s masters dispute — sat for a rare 90-minute interview on the Second Thought With Suzy Weiss podcast, his most extensive public appearance since stepping down as CEO of Hybe America last year
- Braun said he never had a substantial relationship with Swift before the controversy: “I think I’ve met her in my life three times” — and said he never had a real conversation with her before he became, in his words, “a villain” to her fan base
- The dispute began in 2019 when Braun’s company Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Records, the label that owned the master recordings of Swift’s first six albums; Swift responded publicly and called it her “worst case scenario”
- Braun also discussed Kanye West, Spencer Pratt, and Sydney Sweeney in the wide-ranging interview
Scooter Braun doesn’t do many interviews. But the former music mogul sat for a 90-minute conversation with Suzy Weiss on her Second Thought podcast — and used a significant portion of it to address the Taylor Swift masters dispute that defined his public image for the past several years.
His main point: he barely knew her. “I think I’ve met her in my life three times,” Braun told Weiss, per Billboard. He said he’d never had a real conversation with Swift before the 2019 acquisition of Big Machine Records — and his company’s ownership of her first six albums’ master recordings — made him the target of one of pop music’s most public feuds. “I was a villain overnight,” he said.
Swift had called the acquisition her “worst case scenario” and went on to re-record her first six albums as the Taylor’s Version series, eventually reclaiming commercial control of her catalog. Braun maintained that there was no personal animosity on his end going into the situation — a framing that does little to resolve the underlying dispute but clarifies his own account of it, per TMZ.
A Rare Public Appearance
The interview covers more than Swift. Braun also spoke about Kanye West, Spencer Pratt, and made brief mention of Sydney Sweeney. He stepped down as CEO of Hybe America — the US arm of the South Korean entertainment conglomerate — last year, and has largely stayed out of the public eye since. The Second Thought podcast appearance is the most he’s said publicly in some time, per Variety.
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