Taylor Swift's Former Label Head Uses The Mona Lisa To Discourage Fans From Listening To Her Re-Recordings!

Taylor Swift’s former label head officially needs to calm down!

Big Machine Records founder Scott Borchetta took to Instagram on Thursday to seemingly shade the Lover songstress after she publicly called out the label for not giving her the chance to purchase her own masters.

As fans will know, Tay put Big Machine in her crosshairs back in June by sharing a Tumblr post in which she claimed Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun purchased a large chunk of her music without her being given the opportunity to do so herself.

The post inspired Swifties to launch a petition for the 29-year-old to re-record her first six albums as a way of taking back control of her catalog — something the singer confirmed she was actually planning on doing earlier this week.

Now, Borchetta has weighed in on the prospect of T.Swift pulling this Prince-esque power move. Unsurprisingly, he’s not a fan of the idea — and he used a classic work of art to explain why!

In his IG post, the music exec shared a picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa, which he described as “an original beauty” that should not, under any circumstances, be substituted.

He wrote in the caption:

“The Mona Lisa (/ˌmoʊnə ˈliːsə/; Italian: Monna Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci that has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.” An original beauty. Accept no substitute.”

Okay. We see what you did there, Scott.

For those who don’t get this lame allegory, the exec is suggesting Taylor’s potential re-recordings will merely be a substitute for her original work and not live up to the masterpieces she recorded under Big Machine.

So, it’s nice he’s comparing her to one of the most celebrated artists of all time — but, still, dude needs to grow up!

As we reported, the exec previously attempted to clap back at Tay in the wake of her initial post calling out Big Machine and Braun. In a blog post on the label’s website, Borchetta laid out what he called “some truth” about the drama, claiming he was actually trying to negotiate with the Grammy-winner to allow her to buy back her entire catalog before he sold out to Braun.

He wrote in the post:

“Out of courtesy, I personally texted Taylor at 9:06pm, Saturday, June 29th to inform her prior to the story breaking on the morning of Sunday, June 30th so she could hear it directly from me.

I guess it might somehow be possible that her dad Scott, 13 Management lawyer Jay Schaudies (who represented Scott Swift on the shareholder calls) or 13 Management executive and Big Machine LLC shareholder Frank Bell (who was on the shareholder calls) didn’t say anything to Taylor over the prior 5 days. I guess it’s possible that she might not have seen my text. But, I truly doubt that she ‘woke up to the news when everyone else did.’”

As explained in an article by Rolling Stone, any re-recordings of Tay’s older songs would directly compete for listeners — and royalty revenue — with the OGs owned by Big Machine (unless she were to negotiate a deal to pull those original recordings offline).

So, it’s clearly in Scott’s best interest to discourage fans from listening to any of these potential “substitutions,” as he calls it.

We don’t think the Swifties will fall for it! Do YOU?

[Image via WENN/Public Domain]