The rock legend who tried to name his album after Taylor Swift with a foregone conclusion: “I understood her plight”

John Fogerty, lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, can sympathize with Taylor Swift. He spent decades trying to get ownership of the songs in the CCR catalogue that he wrote. He finally acquired majority ownership rights in 2023 and now has full rights.

He is planning to release a new album this summer called ‘Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years’. However, Fogerty had another name in mind. He told Rolling Stone recently that he wanted to honor Swift and her plight to get back her own music by naming the album ‘Taylor’s Version’.

As you can pretty much guess, the record label said that was a no-go, no matter how much he pushed for it. “I understood her plight,” Fogerty said.

“She’s had a wonderful career, and, of course, had saved a lot of money and was a major touring artist, so she was quite able to pay whatever amount the person that was going to sell it,” he added. “I really felt for her at the time, because the guy was selling it to somebody else. That sort of thing has certainly happened to me. It’s very much like what Saul Zaentz might do.”

Little did Fogerty know that Taylor Swift was about to have her “greatest dream come true” too

Just a couple days after Rolling Stone published its article about Fogerty re-releasing CCR’s, Swift told her fans on Friday of a milestone on her website. “All of the music I’ve ever made... now belongs... to me.”

She too now owns the masters for her first six albums, purchasing them for an untold amount, Billboard reported it could’ve been around $360 million, from private equity firm Shamrock Capital.

“All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, full autonomy,” she wrote. Saying that she will be “forever grateful,” she mused that her first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of her forehead.

Similarities between Fogerty and Swift losing ownership of their music

Fogerty “tried really hard” to get the rights to his songs back but suffered multiple setbacks at the hands of Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records. CCR and Fogerty signed with the label in 1968 giving the label control over the rights to the group’s music.

Zaentz later sued Fogerty for ‘self-plagiarism’, i.e. sounding like himself on a solo hit ‘The Old Man Down the Road’, in the 1980’s. Fogerty refused to play CCR songs for years so that Zaentz couldn’t profit from them.

Zaentz sold the rights to Concord in 2004. That label was finally convinced to sell Fogerty majority control of the rights in 2023, shortly before the rights were going to revert to the artist as 56 years had passed.

Swift for her part signed with Big Machine Records, owned by music executive Scott Borchetta, in 2005 when she was only 15 years old. She went on to release six albums with the label before setting off on her own but leaving the rights to the original recordings and performances behind.

Borchetta sold Big Machine Records to Ithaca Holdings, owned by Scooter Braun in 2019 which was like selling her “memories, sweat, handwriting, and dreams,” to a mortal enemy. Swift didn’t learn about the sale until it was made public.

“Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,” she wrote at the time. “Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”

Braun was Kayne West’s manager when the rapper grabbed the microphone out of the then 19-year-old pop singer’s hands during her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech and then declared that Beyoncé should have won the award. Then in 2016, West, now called Ye, made a song with sexual references about Swift and a derogatory term. He said that he had gotten her approval, but a leaked video would later counter that claim.

Swift accused Braun of collaborating with West and Justin Bieber to bully her on social media. Bieber later apologized.

However, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Kelly Clarkson told Swift after she spoke out about the sale of Big Machine Records, that she should re-record all her music putting “brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions.” And thus ‘Talyor’s Version’ was born.

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