Taylor Swift and the Power of Ownership
Her Battle Echoes Women Writers’ Fight for Respect
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
Taylor Swift at the 2023 MTV Video Awards — IHEARTRADIOCA (Wikimedia)
When Taylor Swift announced she was re-recording her early albums to reclaim ownership of her master recordings, she sparked a global conversation about artists’ rights, creative autonomy, and the often-hidden gendered dynamics of the music and publishing industries. Her battle was not just about music; it was about control, dignity, and the right to own one’s labor.
On May 30, 2025, Swift announced she had finally regained ownership of her master recordings; she described it as her “greatest dream come true.” In a heartfelt letter to fans, she wrote:
“All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me. And all my music videos. All the concert films. The album art and photography. The unreleased songs. The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life’s work.”
As a writer, historian, and journalist, I watched her journey unfold not only with admiration but with a deep sense of familiarity. I had already decided to retain my copyright through selective publishing or self-publishing years before Swift lost control of her masters. But like her, I too learned that the cost of ownership is often invisibility.
The dismissal of women’s intellectual property is not new. It is rooted in centuries of patriarchal control over whose voices get amplified and whose work gets credited. Swift, one of the most successful female artists of all time, was forced to revisit the work of her youth because a powerful man, music executive Scooter Braun, bought the rights to her masters without her consent. She responded not by retreating, but by re-recording her albums as “Taylor’s Version,” a strategic and emotional act of reclamation.
“I was so sad; it was the saddest I’ve ever been,” Swift said in a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone about the sale of her masters. “It was like a breakup where you felt like you had no closure.” But she transformed heartbreak into action. “Artists should own their own work for so many reasons,” she told Billboard in 2019. “But the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.
I have lived this struggle in a quieter but no less consequential corner of the creative world. I chose to publish in spaces that respected my right to retain copyright over my work, even when it meant working outside of the “prestige” circuit of elite academic presses or major media outlets. was not a consolation prize. It was a conscious decision to protect the integrity of my labor and intellectual legacy.
This choice has come at a cost. I have been condescended to, written off, and explicitly or implicitly that if my work were truly valuable, it would have appeared in glossy academic journals or elite magazines. But I did not want to be edited out of history, have my work locked behind paywalls, or sign away rights in perpetuity for the sake of prestige. Like Swift, I wasn’t willing to trade ownership for acceptance.
However, my decision risked a perception of not being serious, legitimate, or scholarly enough. Male colleagues would suggest I wasn’t “good enough” for major outlets, implying that my path was a consolation prize rather than a deliberate stand for creative control.
At times, the response wasn’t just condescension; it was theft. From being denied contributor authorship to plagiarism to being bypassed for writing assignments and positions, I have experienced all the disrespect, despite my impressive accomplishments.
What became a pattern first played out when I worked for a former professor revising a historical encyclopedia. I was tasked with a major addition that significantly broadened the work’s historical scope and depth. I was promised a contributor credit, an acknowledgment of my role and research, but when the book was published, I found only a passing mention in the acknowledgments section. Still, I refused to let the work disappear. I posted my full contributions online under my own name, and they went viral, receiving over half a million views — far more than the encyclopedia itself — and have since been cited by major scholars and authors, proving the merit of the research that others had tried to minimize.
Years later it happened again, over my research on Judah P. Benjamin, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the Confederate government and a brilliant legal mind. In 2020, Paul Finkelman, then president of Gratz College and editor of a biography series, expressed interest in my work. He said he wanted my book on Benjamin but would not allow me to participate in his series. Despite my years of research, he told me I wasn’t qualified to write the full-length volume because I didn’t have a Ph.D. That door was shut.
Later, journalist James Traub published “Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy,” a book containing ideas, arguments, and thesis points eerily similar to mine; even my title, “The Mysterious Prince of the Confederacy: Judah P. Benjamin and the Jewish Goal of Whiteness in the South,” was spun into his book.
It was not just the subject; it was the interpretation that mirrored my own, one I had worked to develop and protect. Oddly, Traub was a foreign policy journalist, with just a BA, who admitted he didn’t know anything about American Jewish history, my area of research since graduate school.
Most recently, my work on Francis Salvador, the first Jewish patriot killed in the American Revolution, was echoed, unattributed, in an op-ed by Michael Freund in The Jerusalem Post, titled “Remembering Francis Salvador, the Jewish Paul Revere.” The article mirrored my unpublished manuscript, “Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador and Jewish Patriots during the American Revolution.” The article was essentially an abstract of my earlier work. The thesis, the framing, and even specific language appeared recycled. The op-ed quickly became one of the site’s top opinion pieces, while my years of scholarship remained in obscurity.
is not about ego or sour grapes. It’s about a pattern: women, particularly women outside elite academic or journalistic networks, are not taken seriously until their work is repackaged, often by men with institutional backing from newspapers, magazines, or universities and think tanks. It is easier for them to appropriate our research than to collaborate, credit, or acknowledge us.
Swift’s refusal to accept this status quo has offered many of us a model of how to fight back. By re-recording her music and making “Taylor’s Version” a phenomenon, she proved that artistic integrity and ownership are worth more than industry approval. “It’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine,” she said in 2021.
For me, reclaiming that freedom has meant turning down deals that would have stripped me of my rights and continuing to write, even when it meant being sidelined. I have self-published. I have written for platforms that respected my copyright. I have chosen autonomy over acceptance. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want wider recognition; in fact, I did. But I wasn’t willing to give away my to get it.
On the other side, readers and scholars alike respect my work looking at the quality of the research versus publications. I have had readers across the globe, taught from elementary through graduate school, been cited in books, journal articles, and dissertations, and have had “viral” articles, all without compromising my copyright or my integrity. Maybe I am more known because I refused to play the game.
It’s no accident that so many women, across creative industries, face the same dilemma. We are told that legitimacy requires sacrifice and that ownership is something earned only through conformity. When we resist, we are seen as unserious, difficult, or delusional. But ownership is power. And power, when held by women, remains threatening.
Taylor Swift’s story has helped reframe the conversation about copyright from a legal issue to a feminist one. “I’m rerecording all of my old music because I want my music to live on,” she explained. “I want it to be in movies; I want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.”
I feel the same way about my words. I want them to be read, taught, and remembered, but I want them to remain mine. It’s not a radical demand. It’s a basic right.
And yet, I know there are still people who will dismiss this piece, or my larger body of work, as sour grapes from a writer who couldn’t “make it” in the big leagues. Let me be clear: I didn’t fail to get published. I chose not to surrender ownership. That is not a consolation prize; it’s a conscious decision made with eyes wide open, long before Swift’s battle brought these issues to mainstream attention. Her struggle didn’t inspire my choice. It affirmed it.
Swift’s victory is a beacon for all creators striving for autonomy. It underscores the importance of owning our narratives and the power that comes with it. As she aptly put it:
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.”
When women insist on owning our labor, we are accused of being difficult. When we call out theft, we’re told it’s a coincidence. When we self-publish or go independent, we’re considered not quite good enough. But as Swift showed the world, being underestimated is often the prelude to revolution.
So yes, I write “Bonnie’s Version.” And like “Taylor’s Version,” it may not carry the industry’s golden stamp, but it is mine. And that’s what makes it powerful.
Sources:
Swift, Taylor. https://www.taylorswift.com/, May 30, 2025.
Swift, Taylor. Interview with Rolling Stone, 2020.
Swift, Taylor. Interview with Billboard, 2019.
Freund, Michael. “Remembering Francis Salvador, the Jewish Paul Revere.” The Jerusalem Post, 2024.
Traub, James. Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy. Yale University Press, 2021.
Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS, is a historian, librarian, journalist, and artist. She is the author of “On This Day in History…: Significant Events in the American Year,” and “A Constant Battle: McGill University’s Complicated History of Antisemitism and Now anti-Zionism.” She has a BA in History and Art History and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from McGill University. She has done graduate work in Jewish history at Concordia University as part of the MA in Judaic Studies and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of their MA in Jewish Education. She contributed to the “History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2008,” edited by Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Fred L. Israel (2012). She is the former Features Editor at the History News Network and reporter at Examiner.com, where she covered politics, universities, religion, and news. Her scholarly articles can be found on Academia.edu.
