This is exactly right. Double Elvis. All right, Discos. Welcome in. We've got a great Rewind episode for you all this week. This was originally released back on January 11, 2022. It's our Taylor Swift episode, and it caused a bit of a stir. The New York Post ended up writing about it, but I think that had more to do with just how insane this story actually is rather than the way in which we told it. It's a living true crime nightmare. What Taylor Swift has had to endure in the face of her stalkers. It's downright terrifying. And sure, yeah, I get it. Some might say, well, that's the price one has to pay for that sort of fame, but we're all human and having to live with the constant threat of your home being invaded, abduction, or worse. That is not a fate that I would wish on anyone, not even my own worst enemy, never mind a pop star. Anyway, check out this classic Rewind episode of Disgrace Land on Taylor Swift and let us know what you think. 6179066638 to drop us a voicemail or a text, leave a review for the show on Apple Podcast, or hit us up at Disgrace Land pod on the socials, Rocka Rolla. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Taylor Swift are insane. She has a laundry list of stalkers nearly as long as her list of hit singles. One stalker sent more than 40 love letters and detailed death threats to her record label. On three separate occasions, that same stalker drove 900 miles to hand deliver them. Another invaded her New York home, used her shower, and was found waiting for Taylor in her bed. The threats on her life have become so persistent that her security team installed facial recognition software at the venue she performed in, specifically to distinguish her stalkers from her fans. And while all this deadly fanfare was in full tilt, she lost the legal rights to the master recordings of her first six albums, effectively stripping her of her life's work to that point. But despite all of this, or perhaps in spite of all of this, Taylor Swift made and continues to make great music. That music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a pre-set loop from my mellotron called Cheeky Teeky MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Old Town Road by Lil Nas X. And why would I play you that specific slice of Wrangler on my booty cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 30th, 2019. And that was the day Taylor Swift lost control of her music, an action that inspired her to reclaim control of not only her career, but of her life like never before. On this episode, interstate stalking, death threats, lost songs, love letters gone mad, and Taylor Swift. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land. The letters in Eric Swabrick's hands were sweaty. He fiddled with the maps mindedly, tracing the creases in the worn paper from the driver's seat of his sedan. The car idled in the parking lot of big machine label group, exhaling a blue smog into the humid Nashville air. Eric's handwritten notes had grown wrinkled and weary from repeatedly re-reading them during his 900 mile trip from Austin to Nashville. He obsessively reassessed the notes he'd written nearly every chance he got at every stop on his journey, every gas station, every diner, every bathroom break. If he stopped, he dug out the parcel, opened it, and re-read the notes. He saw his words in a new light every time. He sounded devoted when he read it at a rundown rest area in rural Arkansas. He sounded firm at some hipster taqueria in Memphis. And right now, next to the glistening metallic backdrop of downtown Nashville, he sounded determined. August 2018, Eric removed one letter from its worn envelope, addressed to Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records. He traced his final statement delicately with his pinky finger. I will not hesitate to kill her, Scott. And there's nothing you, your lawyers, or the law will be about to do about it. Shit, how would he miss that he had written about twice? Remember who I am. One who is that would get pointed across to both Scott and Taylor, despite the double use of the word about. Taylor, Taylor Swift, Taylor, his soulmate, his down south sweetheart, his blonde haired beauty, his. Eric's love for Taylor Swift started blooming at age 22, that age between adolescence and true adulthood. But he was now 26. He had watched four years of quiet devotion pass by. Felt the object of his obsession, Taylor Swift reached out to him in more than 400 dreams. Eric logged each vision in one of his notebooks. Every aching detail he etched them into those pages. He had waited long enough to claim her. But Eric hadn't wanted to do it like this. Take time off from work, from his job as a school bus driver, crisscross state lines and roll up to the headquarters of his now sworn enemy, Scott Borchetta, just to plop a fat stack of letters on the right desk. He didn't want any of that, but he had no other choice. He had information to deliver, important information that demanded the attention of Big Machine, information, involving the safety of their artist, Taylor Swift. It could have all been so very easy, but no one was letting him do things the easy way. His letters had been cordial at first, letters to Big Machine addressed to Scott Borchetta specifically requesting a meeting with Taylor. He was polite, but he was firm. Couple emails too, he was respectful. And that didn't get him anywhere though, he didn't get an answer, not even the dignity of a response. Even if it had been a no, such a slap in the face, didn't they know that all these songs, all the Billboard number ones raking in more money than a South American drug cartel, were about him? Maybe he hadn't explained that clearly enough. So he took things a little further. More handwritten letters piled up in Scott Borchetta's mailbox at Big Machine, and those letters now demanded that Eric be allowed to meet Taylor Swift. And how did Eric know that Taylor Swift was really his soulmate? Scott would probably want to know, right? Eric explained it simply, Taylor and Taylor alone was the person he wanted to rape. Yes, you heard that correctly. That was Eric Swarbrick's entirely fucked up logic, that he knew that Taylor Swift was his soulmate, because she was the person he wanted to rape. It made no sense, and as such, the logic was greeted with nothing. Bufkis, no response from Taylor or her hatchet man, Scott Borchetta. Absolute silence. For all of his heartfelt effort, Eric was rewarded with ugly, deafening silence. It made the noise in his head that much louder. The sweet swells of adoration he felt for Taylor became a violent itch. This was the game Scott wanted to play, huh? Paint Taylor into that hard to get corner? How about I paint the walls of your shitty little record label's office with your blood when I blow your fucking brains out of your head, you snobby little fuck? Eric's threat must have landed, because Scott didn't answer that letter either. This, Eric concluded, was where the other man always messed up. The psycho stalkers with no grasp on reality, tweeting sweet sentiments that Taylor multiple times a day, every day likely from the comfort of their mother's basement. He read about one guy who did that more than 700 times, said he wanted to buy her a purple dress and make her his wife over and over again. So lame, so delusional. No, Eric had to reinvent his approach. He couldn't stomach the thought of flinging his heart at an unknown inbox again. He wasn't going to cower behind a computer screen any longer. He was going to deliver his messages in person, like a man. Going to Taylor's home was simply out of the question. Each of her residences he knew them all had security like Fort Knox, thanks to the many delusional suitors who had come before him. The ones who claimed they wanted career advice, the ones who held down her doorbell for hours at a time, were through stolen money over the fence like confetti in an act of desperation. Going to Taylor directly wasn't the right move. Instead, Eric had access to the next best thing, access to the man who had once seen the same potential in Taylor that Eric's on her now. So here he was, pulled over in the parking lot of big machine label group, ready to hand deliver his latest correspondence to Scott Borschetta. Today marked his third pilgrimage to big machine. And you know what they said about the third time, third time's the term because you come packing death threats. He felt the blood vessels in his temples swell. How could they do this? How could they deny him for so long? Ignore him and lump him in with their litany of spineless stalkers. How could they spurn him like he had some sort of sick case of puppy love? Would a case of puppy love make someone drive 900 miles to meet their soulmate? Would they do it three times? Eric grit his teeth and resisted the urge to crumple the letter in his hand. The adoration he felt in his chest pulsed harder, pounding like a battering ram on a locked door. His feelings were coming full circle. His unbridled love, the aching blank space in his heart was bubbling over. Hell's bells drowned out the sound of wedding bells in his mind. It was becoming rage, hatred, pure hatred. It moved him even more than the sweet and sappy feelings did. He lifted his eyes to the building in front of him and recited his favorite line from a past letter to no one in particular. He had read it enough times that he had it memorized, tattooed on his brain like a promise to himself. I will continue writing you until I'm strong and independent enough to enter society. And once I've entered, it'll be too late. Taylor will die. I will insure it. Taylor Swift's mind reduced the backstage buzz surrounding her at the Raymond James Stadium to a low hum. She scratched at a piece of confetti tickling the nape of her neck as she watched a horde of assistants peel off her up-teenth stage outfit. She wasn't known as a quick change queen for nothing. Tonight, she had filled a 65,000 person capacity stadium in Tampa, Florida. That was the blessing of a big reputation like hers. For better or worse, it got asses in seats. And in 2018, Taylor Swift's reputation couldn't be contained. Not by the menacing pop of her new album of the same name, nor by the grand display of her reputation world tour, a feat so massive that it had to be sliced into six acts. Act five of the show was over. Time for the final act, the big finale. But tonight, it was more of a big fuck you. It was August 14th, 2018. Exactly one year since a judge in Denver, Colorado slammed down a gavel and ruled in Taylor's favor for her sexual assault case. One year since a courtroom full of people decided to believe that, yes, a radio DJ had groped her ass at a meet and greet, even though it felt unbelievable that there was ever any doubt about the incident. I mean, there was literally a photo of it happening. It had since spread across the internet. A moment of humiliation, frozen in time. One hand up her skirt, one hand on his hip, one shit eating grin on his face. Now he owed her one dollar, a symbolic gesture since Taylor was not wanting for money. All she wanted was respect, not just for her, but for women everywhere. Today was the anniversary of a victory. She would be elated. She would feel triumphant. But tonight, all of that was overshadowed by something far more sinister. Taylor lifted her legs one at a time to step out of one stage costume and into another. A hairstylist tugged at her golden locks, futzing with hairspray and bobby pins. She had learned to tune it all out. She tuned it out in the same way she did with the drama on the internet. Like comments that said she resembled a roadkill reanimated by a drunk taxidermist. Like when the hashtag Taylor Swift is over party was the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide. Switching on her mental mute button was a much needed skill as she had acquired over the years as her fame mushroomed beyond her wildest dreams. But no matter what she did, she couldn't tune out the things Erik Swarbrick vowed to do to her. Erik. She hated that she knew his name, hated that she had dedicated anything more than half a brain cell to his existence. But he kept barging his way into her life over and over again. She had no choice, especially if she wanted to make it out of the sixth situation unharmed, if she wanted to make it out alive. All those letters about his desire to tear her limb from limb, to rape her, to kill her, to end her. She shimmied into a sequined purple dress as the threats looped in her mind. He didn't even make it into Big Machine this time, her security team assured her. The guards spotted him the second he stepped out of his car. He left the property in handcuffs before he could even try to break into Big Machine's headquarters. Easy, well handled, but still terrifying. Another shimmy in the snug suit as she felt an invisible hand zip her up. She tried to be patient, tried to evaluate it from a kinder, more human perspective. Surely this man could not be well. But the letters kept stacking up, and so too did the threats. Dozens at this point, signed, sealed, delivered, deranged. It was so concerning that her team now used facial recognition technology at each of her concerts, cameras, programs specifically to single out Erik or any other notable stalker in Taylor's Sea of Superfans. Imagine that. You're so famous and so harassed by a small army of stalkers that facial recognition technology is specifically programmed and installed to identify the lunatics who want to kill you. Insane. At the very least, all this madness had been buffered by Scott. Scott Borschetta at Big Machine always had Taylor's best interests at heart. He had them at heart from the very beginning, when he had no label to speak of and she had no massive following. But one day in 2004, sitting in the cozy ambiance of the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Scott saw a future star on stage and made her a promise. A promise to sign her, Taylor Swift, when Big Machine, his record label, was actually in business and no longer just an idea floating around in his head. Now, Big Machine did some of the best business in the music industry thanks to six albums from Taylor. That all could have belonged to RCA. Could have. But Taylor decided to opt out of that deal so she wouldn't have to record other people's songs. RCA called it a development deal. A promise to dangle in front of a teenage girl as the label observed her growth as an artist, her songwriting, her musicianship. RCA dangled it for 12 months before Taylor got wise and got out. In the record label's eyes and RCA's eyes, Taylor Swift was just a wait and see in the case that country music went more mainstream and thus she would have been more profitable for them. But apparently RCA hadn't been watching closely enough. They hadn't learned yet that Taylor Swift didn't sit still. And if she was still, it was only because she had her head down for the few moments it took to write her own ticket. Because Taylor Swift didn't dream. She planned. She ditched RCA and began working as a songwriter for Sony A-TV publishing. Every day after school, she pulled up a chair with writers twice her age, took out her pen and put her 14-year-old heartaches on paper, knocked every breakup banger out of the park. RCA could develop that. After doing that on her own terms for another decade, it was Scott Borschetta, not RCA, who was running out of space on his walls for platinum records. Suffice to say, now Scott really had her best interest at heart, even though their contract had come to a close upon the release of her snarling new album, Reputation. Taylor started to warm up as an assistant reapplied her lipstick. No, she wouldn't entertain this pity party not on her day on the anniversary of her big win in Colorado. She wasn't going to ever give Eric Swabrik the satisfaction free rent in her mind. Never, ever, ever, she muttered to herself. Showtime. A crowbar, an aluminum baseball bat, lockpicks, a few pairs of rubber gloves. Taylor stopped reading. She couldn't bring herself to review the full list. Police had caught another one in Rhode Island this time, outside her mansion in Westerly. Holiday House says the original owner had called a decades ago. And a man named David Little had traveled all the way from Des Moines, Iowa to see it, to see her. He packed no suitcase for his interstate journey, just a backpack brimming with more than 30 different tools commonly used when invading someone's home. He told the cops he was there for a visit. Swore up and down that he was friends with Taylor and she had agreed to share some music industry tips, which definitely explained the tool in his bag made specifically for breaking windows, right? Taylor aside from the safety of another of her homes, this one in Los Angeles, import another round of treats on the dining room table for her cat Olivia Benson. The fluffy Scottish fold was a cat Taylor had named after one of her favorite on-screen leading ladies. Olivia named as a tribute to the empathetic law and order special victims unit detective, munched away at her second dinner dubiously. Taylor aside from the cozy safety of her dining room while she scratched Olivia behind the ears, she wished home always felt as secure, but it was hard to truly unwind when the police reports stacked up as fast as fan mail. There had been one man who came here to this very house in Los Angeles, from Colorado, was little more than a knife and some rope in his car. Then there was the prick who had climbed onto a roof in New York, who wasn't even de-mentally fit to stand trial. And now Mr. Little had camped out in Rhode Island for her, eagerly awaiting that quote unquote career advice for the lockpick in one hand and a crowbar in the other. The threats changed, the weapons changed, but at the end of the day, every one of these men was the same sick bastard deep down inside. They all professed love for a woman they never spent a second with, never even held eye contact with so they could claim they shared a smoldering glance from across the room. They were in love with a Google search, nothing more. And she very much wanted to be excluded from their made up narratives. The gloves, her mind kept going back to the gloves. What did he need the gloves for? A lump slid down her throat. It rested in a familiar spot, the same uncomfortable place as when she received a different piece of alarming news just a few weeks prior. As it turns out, Scott Borschetta did not have Taylor's best interest at heart. Even worse, he didn't have her masters. Masters are an artist's official original recording of a song or album. If an artist owns their masters, they can license their music to any artist or third party they want, and they can rake in royalties in the process. If they don't have ownership, if they don't have their masters, their intellectual property can create quite the profit for someone else. In short, if an artist owns his or her masters, they can do whatever the hell they want with their music. But the opposite applies as well. If someone else owns an artist's master recordings, then they can do whatever the hell they want with the artist's music. Taylor found out that her masters were gone in the most impersonal way possible on the news, just like the public did. Scott had sold Big Machine Label Group in her life's work along with it. Through the sale of the record label, ownership of her six albums had been transferred to Scooter Braun, the music industry mastermind behind artists like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, aka the other biggest pop stars in the world, the other people vying for the number one spots on Spotify playlists and Billboard charts. For years, Braun had been trying to topple Taylor from the top of the pop game so his own artists could commandeer the number one position. Now he'd profit from the very same songs and albums he had been snubbed. Taylor's songs. Braun also just so happened to be the former manager of Kanye West, who not only famously interrupted Taylor's 2009 VMA acceptance speech, but later broke out the B word to refer to her in his song, famous and for what? The sake of a clever bar? A few cruel laughs amongst his guy friends? And maybe he thought it was dark humor when he placed a lifelike replica of Taylor's naked body in a bed with mannequins resembling Donald Trump and Chris Brown for the famous music video too. If that was the case, Taylor didn't see the humor. She only saw the internet staring at her likeness in the new without her consent. Gross. And no matter how you looked at it, the man who represented her direct competition now owned her hard-earned original music. Q the Bad Blood It was a nightmare that was perfectly legal, an overnight vanishing act. A lifetime of Taylor's work, ages 15 to 29, was gone. Scott Borschetta saw $300 million from his sale of Big Machine. Taylor saw nothing. Not that she needed the money, although that's what the internet always made it out to look like. No, it was about the principle, the fact that a man promised her the world and then sold it after a decade-long relationship. She had requested to purchase the masters on multiple occasions, and the label resisted every time, not unless she signed another contract, they said. Not only was that too tit-for-tat for Taylor's style, it was the exact opposite of what she wanted. She longed to move forward with a career, but in a way that she could take her hard-earned musical growth with her. Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation, herself titled debut. Those six albums told the story of her life to date. It felt like such a simple request, she just wanted full ownership of her life. Overnight, Scott Borschetta wordlessly told her that she couldn't have it. No one would let her have it. Not Scott, not Eric, not David. The men in her life, both welcome and unwelcome, were making sure of it. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. The rain wrapping on her window was so loud that night that she almost didn't hear the person stirring in her master bathroom. The pitter-patter of the water streaming from the showerhead blended in with the raindrops lulling her to sleep. A sliver of light slipped under the bottom of the bathroom door like a gentle warning as she dozed peacefully in her Tribeca apartment. There was a scraping noise, metal shower curtain rings on a metal curtain rod, then the click of a door lock. She shifted in bed, drifting between dreams about world tours and white felines. She called out to her boyfriend, who may or may not have come in late that night. She was trapped in the drowsy state between blissful sleep and lethargic consciousness. The sliver of light was extinguished and the room went dark. Silence except for the tender taps on her window. Intermental fog, she paused. She listened, tried to detect the slightest disturbance with ears that had fine-tuned so many hit singles. Nothing. She rolled over, pulling the sheets up around her neck like a startled toddler. But the sheets wouldn't budge. Something was weighing them down. She bolted upright in bed and blinked. A black mass loomed on the end of her bed, inches from her. She prayed it was her boyfriend, prayed it was anyone she knew as long as it was a familiar face. She didn't even get the chance to see him clearly. The shadow moved suddenly and swiftly, a hand on her neck, pinned to the bed. She felt her throat crumple under the pressure of his grip. No oxygen, no cell phone nearby, no neighbors to cry out to. More pressure, fingers digging into her skin, hard enough to leave a bruise, but she wasn't worried about bruises right now. The shadow leaned in closer, so close she could start to discern the details. Brown eyes, a beard she had seen before. His hot breath brushed against her cheeks. Her eyes watered as she felt the last bit of oxygen leave her lungs. It escaped her chest as a mottled scream. She shot up in bed, gasping for air. Her hands went right to her throat. She had been choking on nothing. An icy sweat clung to her pajamas. It was just another nightmare. Thank God. These are the kinds of chilling nightmares we can only imagine torment the dreams of women who feel the very real, very dangerous grip of stalkers and abusers. The weight of worries sometimes sneaks its way into the subconscious, a burdensome weight that Taylor Swift is surely well acquainted with. On this particular night, Taylor was in bed alone, but in her Beverly Hills home on the opposite side of the country from New York, thousands of miles from Tribeca. And more importantly, thousands of miles away from Roger Alarato. But why did the media always make lists of her ex-boyfriends, her lists of unwanted suitors like Roger Alarato, would be so much more impressive. Unwanted suitors, fuck that, call them what they were, stalkers, malicious, illegal, invasive stalkers. And Roger Alarato was among the worst. The first time had been upsetting enough. Last year, the police found him napping in the bed of her New York apartment. He had just showered in her private bathroom fresh as a demented little daisy. Had he been in bed waiting for her? Or was burglary really just that exhausting? It didn't matter. What did matter is that he went to jail. And when his time behind bars was up, he did it again. Six months in the clink for attempted burglary at Taylor's home had seemingly taught him nothing. After his brief prison sentence, his first priority was shrinking the distance between himself and Taylor Swift immediately. He sprang from his jail cell and onto the first jet he could find out of Florida, landed in New York, hailed a cab and took his first steps of true freedom outside of Taylor's Tribeca home. But that wasn't good enough, because that wasn't close enough. He swiped a ladder from a nearby construction site, hoisted himself onto a patio and smashed her glass door with a concrete paver. His unwelcome entrance cost $4,000 in damages. The police arrived before Alarato could get squeaky clean in her shower this time. A reporter later asked him if he'd do it again. Probably, he said, with more violence, but not towards her. No, great. That's cool of him. Taylor swung her legs over the edge of her bed and there was no use trying to sleep now. Rhode Island, New York, Beverly Hills, nowhere was safe. The media eagerly shared her home addresses with anyone who cared to look them up, which of course was apparently every whack job on the planet. Taylor Swift was already well beyond the point of sacrificing some sense of normalcy in her life. She had handed that over ages ago when she hired a 24-7 security team. But somehow, she was still knee-deep in break-in bullshit. How long had it been since she had driven by herself in a car? Six years, eight? The question depressed her. Years ago, ten to be exact, she had said during an interview that if she had to choose between walking down the street alone unnoticed and playing for thousands of screaming fans, she'd pick the sold-out stadiums without hesitation. But nobody had warned her about what happens when the fame follows you home at night with love letters and a lockpick. All she had ever wanted to do was to connect with people, to be that voice whispering through someone's headphones in the middle of the night when they had no one else to turn to. Some good that had done her. Now men were in her bedrooms ready to return the favor except they weren't whispering. When she was a teenager sitting at the table with the other songwriters at Sony, she wrote what she knew. She wrote what people her age could connect with. The adults churned out songs about settling down, about complacency, contentment. Taylor was 14 years old at the time. She didn't have time for any of that. What she had was a mix of teenage metal and blushing vulnerability. She wrote through the eyes of a frizzy-haired girl from Pennsylvania who grew up on a Christmas tree farm. How about the girl wearing t-shirts and sneakers who begrudgingly watched girls in high heels and cheerleading uniforms scoop up any boy they wanted? Misfit was a strong word. She hadn't been a misfit. But she hadn't quite fit in as a teenager either. And then fame spun her around. Slapped sparkly cowgirl boots on her feet and pushed a million microphones in her face. Plastered her face on every available billboard and cleared off old billboard specifically to make room for her. She was suddenly a 16-year-old superstar. And then she really didn't fit in. She left high school after a sophomore year in favor of homeschooling. But even though she no longer had to navigate the hormone-addled halls of her old school, she never stopped writing music for the people who felt like they had no safe place to turn to. Comfort music. But at this point, Taylor Swift was the one who could use some comfort. She traced her steps back and forth across the modlin' moonlight pooling on her bedroom floor. Had she opened up too much? Given away too much of herself. Her newest album, Lover, seemed to tow that line perfectly. She countered her first dance ballads with cheeky bursts of colorful pop, seemingly taken right from the pages of giddy teenage diary entries. The title track could make you weepy, but a song like I Forgot That You Existed snapped you right back down to earth, serious to sassy and a heartbeat. Lover was more playful than usual, and Taylor could play all she wanted was her album after all. 2019 marked a rare first for Taylor Swift. She released the first album she had ever owned 100%. The freedom of it all made her heart flutter. But maybe that's what she needed. More fluttering and a lot less anxious pounding. On April 9th, 2021, Taylor Swift was in the ears of super fans and super stalkers alike, as the sounds of her new album Fearless, Taylor's version, leapt from stereos around the world. Fearless, the 2008 album, was not something she had any rights to. She lost those rights when her masters were stripped from her ownership. And no matter how wrong that seemed, Taylor went back to the beginning so that she could do things her own way. She was the new boss, the owner, the CEO. She re-recorded all 19 songs of Fearless for the deluxe edition of the album, alongside guests of her choice and in the order she wanted. And once again, Taylor Swift was everywhere, especially on the charts. The new Fearless, Taylor's version, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Old hat for Taylor Swift at this point as it was her ninth album to do so. But the release marked the first time any re-recorded album had ever topped on the chart. The feat was spurned on by 50 million global streams on its release day, itself a record for the biggest opening day of any album on Spotify that year. That record would hold up for seven whole months, until she broke it with her next re-release, Red. And there was another thing, Fearless, Taylor's version, boasted the biggest first week sales of any country album in six years. The records were nice, but all that ultimately didn't matter. To Taylor, what mattered was that the album came together at all, that she had found a way to take her creative past with her and simultaneously leave all the baggage in someone else's front steps. The new Fearless represented more than just a necessary redo. It was a reassessment, a chance to peer inside herself and examine what she wanted to put into the world, what pieces of her heart she wanted to offer up, and which pieces were better to keep private. She reached so far into herself that she found old songs that didn't make the cut the first time around now more than 10 years old. Teenage Taylor had written them. Adult Taylor breathed new life into them. They were in better hands now. Between the previously unheard material and the re-recordings, the new Fearless was a 26 song behemoth. It took up space and stood its ground. In the vault, a Taylor Swift catalog had been cracked wide open, and finally it was Taylor who held the key. In the hush of 2020, she could hear clearly. She heard exactly how she wanted Fearless to sound the second time around. For once, there was nothing to tune out. The world had slowed to a quiet crawl, and so had the danger and drama. Her deadliest followers could do little more than peer at her social media accounts from behind bars. And the other would-be suitors remained in the prison of their own homes, paralyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Taylor's mental mute button grew cobwebs. And Taylor Swift, the real Taylor Swift, basked in the globe at all in her Beverly Hills home. It was crazy to think how many houses she was in right now, how many dance parties were going on amongst teenage girls, how many first kisses were happening, and likely a few backseat breakups as well. They had all welcomed her into their homes. In return, she gave them a very carefully curated version of herself back. Not too little, not too much, this perfectly fine. The new album had soothed so many stings. The sting of losing her music in the first place, the original masters, the sting of the recent resale of her masters to a private equity firm, the sting of the people who entered her life with a peace sign and left giving her the finger. This was her comfort music. Her phone chirped. She checked the caller ID, her security team. Shit. Taylor answered but didn't say hello. Cops had peeled another one away from the doors of her Tribeca apartment. He says he knows you, the voice on the other end of the line told her. None of them know me, Taylor said. They don't know me at all. This one was older than usual, 52. An onlooker had spotted him and called 911. Today marked his fifth try at least to catch Taylor Swift's attention outside her New York home. And this time the stalker left in handcuffs. Then you could say that he was dedicated, but it's more accurate to say that he was a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland is created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the exactly right network in iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at DisgracelandPod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to DisgracelandPod.com. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at DisgracelandPod and on YouTube at youtube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rock a roll. He's a bad, bad man. All right guys, thanks for checking out this classic rewind episode of Disgraceland. What do you think? Would you give up your privacy even if it meant living under the constant threat of harm like Taylor Swift? 617-906-6638 to let us know via voicemail and text at DisgracelandPod on the socials Rock a Roll.
