WATCH: Taylor Swift GOES OFF on Record Exec Scooter Braun, ‘Toxic Male Privilege’ in Awards Show Speech
Pop star Taylor Swift delivered an emotional speech while accepting Billboard’s Woman of the Decade Award, Thursday, during which she called out record executive Scooter Braun, the George Soros family, private equity firms, and “toxic male privilege.”
Swift delivered the speech in response to Braun purchasing the rights to her back-catalogue of music, a business move she vocally opposed.
“Lately there has been a new shift that has affected me personally, and that I feel is a potentially harmful force in our industry, and as your resident loud person I feel the need to bring it up. And that is the unregulated world of private equity coming in and buying up our music as if it is real estate,” declared Swift. “As if it’s an app, or a shoe line. This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent.”
“After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalogue was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and the Carlyle Group. Yet, to this day, none of these investors have ever bothered to contact me or my team directly to perform their due diligence on their investment,” she continued. “On their investment in me, to ask how I might feel about the new owner of my art. The music I wrote, the videos I created, photos of me, my handwriting, my album designs.”
“And of course Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale, or even when it was announced. I’m fairly certain he knew exactly how I’d feel about it though,” Swift proclaimed, adding, “and let me just say that the definition of the toxic male privilege in our industry is people saying, ‘But he’s always been nice to me,’ when I’m raising valid concerns about artists and the rights to own their music.”
“Of course he’s nice to you, if you’re in this room, you have something he needs,” she concluded. “The fact is that private equity is what enabled this man to think, according to his own social media post, that he could ‘buy’ me, but I’m obviously not going willingly.”
Watch above via Billboard.
