98 Degrees have revealed that Taylor Swift successfully re-recording and re-releasing her albums inspired them to do the same.
In September, the beloved ’00s boyband reunited and embarked on their 25th Anniversary tour, celebrating their tenure in pop music. After wrapping up the tour last Sunday (October 8), bandmates Nick Lachey, Jeff Timmons, Drew Lachey, and Justin Jeffre spoke to E! News about what’s next for the group.
“We’re actually in the studio now working on a new project,” said Lachey. “We’re gonna re-record five of our classic hits in kind of the re-record/get-your-masters-back move. And then we’re also gonna have five new songs as well, and a new single coming out at the top of the year.”
Timmons added that the band wanted to re-record their music for a while, but there were “battles with the label.”
He continued: “So, we thought it’d be natural for us to do this, you know, sort of rerecording of our masters. Taylor Swift sort of brought it to the forefront. The fans have embraced that. And so we’re like, ‘OK, now’s the time to do it.'”
Drew Lachey also praised Swift for giving other artists the confidence to reclaim ownership of their music.“I feel like, almost before Taylor did it, it was like, ‘Oh, you’re re-recording the masters,’” he explained. “It was kind of like, ‘I’ll just stick with the original’ kind of thing.
“When [Swift] did it and she was like, ‘No, this is my music. I want to take ownership of it again,’ people were like, ‘Yeah Taylor!’ Now, everybody’s like, ‘I want to re-record my masters and get it back out there.’ So, I feel like there’s an acceptance and almost an alliance between the artists and the fans now to support the re-recorded masters.”
In 2019, Scooter Braun bought Big Machine Records – who owned the masters to Swift’s first six albums – for $300million (£247,266,000). When news broke of Braun gaining the rights to Swift’s masters, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that this was “the worst-case scenario” for her, calling him out for his “incessant, manipulative bullying.”
After singer-turned-talk show host Kelly Clarkson suggested she should, Swift confirmed that she would re-record all six albums. Since then, she has released the re-recordings of her first three albums. In 2021, she released ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ and ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’. This year, she put out ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’.
Last month, 98 Degrees spoke to Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM radio show and was asked “how annoyed” they were when fellow ’00s pop boyband *NSYNC‘s reunion, who will be releasing a new song together, ‘Better Place’, for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack.
Nick Lashey joked that they “stole the thunder.” Jeffre added, “It’s a boy band universe.” Drew Lashey then answered seriously *NSYNC’s return is beneficial for the entire boyband genre. “When one succeeds, we all succeed,” the younger Lashey brother said. “Because we’re all kind of like us, *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, we’re all clumped into the same, into the same kind of pile there. So, if one’s elevated, it elevates everybody.”
In other news, Taylor Swift is set to re-release her fifth studio album ‘1989’, which originally came out in 2014. NME gave the original album three-and-a-half stars, writing, “‘1989’ is Taylor Swift’s radical reinvention: one to finally alienate her country audience and plant her flag firmly in pop soil.”
‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ will be released later this month on October 27 with five “insane” unheard, “from the vault” tracks.
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