With superstar singer and songwriter Taylor Swift escalating her public feud with him and alleged “death threats” from her supporters, Scooter Braun, whose company Ithaca Holdings bought Swift’s former record label, Big Machine Label Group, has finally broken his silence on Swift and her claims that she’s being bullied by Braun and BMLG co-founder Scott Borchetta.
Tension between Swift, Braun and Borchetta took an allegedly “threatening” turn last week after Swift took to social media to urge her fans to “let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel” about what she described as unfair restrictions placed on the performance of her songs produced by BMLG and alleged bullying behavior by the men.
As reported by Page Six, Braun’s Nashville office was forced to shut down Friday “following threats allegedly sparked by Taylor Swift’s claim she was being bullied and barred from performing her old hits.” The “threats,” which Page Six notes were not reported to Nashville authorities, followed Swift posting a lengthy message to her fans on social media Thursday accusing the two men of forbidding her from performing her old songs at the American Music Awards and Borchetta telling her to “stop talking about him and Scooter Braun.”
“Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished,” Swift wrote in the letter to fans (full letter below).
For the first time publicly, Braun addressed the increasingly bitter battle between BMLG and Swift, which he said has gotten “out of hand,” resulting in “death threats” and “offices being closed.” Though he refused to go into specifics about her complaints, Braun condemned the practice of airing grievances publicly that should be addressed privately and choosing to be “politically correct” over trying to achieve “conflict resolution.”
“I haven’t talked about this in six months. Not once. I haven’t made a statement about it,” Braun said during a Q&A at the 2019 Entertainment Industry Conference Thursday, as reported by Variety. “When there’s a lot of things being said and a lot of different opinions, yet the principals haven’t had a chance to speak to each other, there’s a lot of confusion. I’m not going to go into details here, because it’s just not my style. 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.”
Saying he believes people are “fundamentally good,” Braun suggested that what has gone wrong between Swift and BMLG comes down to “miscommunication.” He said that he’s been urging more communication — privately not via social media — between the two sides for six months, “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.”
“I think there are a lot of real problems in the world, and I think that these problems that are being discussed can be discussed behind closed doors and figured out pretty easily, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for six months,” he said. “And 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. And I think people need to come together and have a conversation, because that’s not what we got in this industry for.”
“The truth is, I have no ill will for anybody,” he said. “And the moment people want to have a conversation with me, I’m ready to have that conversation, and I’m not going to add to the narrative. I disagree with it, but I’m not going to add to the narrative. I just want to fix things and set a better example for people.”
He then took his comments to a “grander scale,” referencing political discourse in the country. “Right now we’re in a scary time where people say things and then people might not be in the right mindset and do really horrible things,” said Braun. “And we’re inciting all of this by continuing these arguments in public. We just need to go behind closed doors and see if we can have a conversation. And if we’re not having conversations, then I don’t think we’re going to find resolution.”