Scooter Braun Addresses Taylor Swift Feud For the First Time

Braun, who owns the master rights to Swift’s first six albums: “I think people need to come together and have a conversation”

Ever since music manager Scooter Braun’s company Ithaca Holdings LLC. acquired Taylor Swift’s back catalog via its acquisition of her former label Big Machine Label Group, Swift has been very open about her disapproval of Braun. She’s accused him of “incessant, manipulative bullying,” announced plans to re-record her songs to regain control of her masters, and more recently alleged that Braun and her ex-label boss Scott Borchetta were trying to ban her from performing music from her pre-Lover albums during the upcoming American Music Awards, where she is scheduled to be honored with the Artist of the Decade accolade.

In the past months as all of this has happened, Braun has kept silent on the matter. Today, Braun addressed the issue for the first time at the 2019 Entertainment Industry Conference, Variety reports. Variety’s Shirley Halperin asked Braun what it’s like to have Swift’s fans turn against him. He responded by explaining why he hasn’t engaged in any public online discourse about the feud.

“I just think we live in a time of toxic division, and of people thinking that social media is the appropriate place to air out on each other and not have conversations. And I don’t like politicians doing it. I don’t like anybody doing it, and if that means that I’ve got to be the bad guy longer, I’ll be the bad guy longer, but I’m not going to participate.”Braun repeatedly reiterated his desire to communicate with Swift, though he never actually mentioned her by name. He also alluded to receiving “death threats” during the fallout with Swift. “It’s hard, because I can handle it pretty easily, but when it gets to a place where there’s death threats and there’s offices being called and people being threatened…it’s gotten out of hand,” he said. “And I think people need to come together and have a conversation, because that’s not what we got in this industry for.”

He also discussed how the incident has affected his personal relationships:

“And the only good thing for me is that when you get knocked down on some stuff, you get to find out who your real friends are real quick. And watching some people in the industry who might smile in your face, and then suddenly you’ve got a little dent in the armor and they come trying to kick it in even more, it doesn’t bother me, but it lets me know where I stand. The truth is, I have no ill will for anybody.

“I know this is going to be the most controversial thing I say—I don’t know where we got messed up along the way that we decided being politically correct is more important than having conflict resolution,” Braun said. “People are allowed to grow as human beings. They’re allowed to have conversations. They’re allowed to change their mind. They’re allowed to go from not liking to each other to liking each other, and vice versa. But you don’t find that out just yelling at each other. You find that out by showing each other respect and having a conversation.