Two artists. Two sets of lyrics. Two controversies simmer.
Taylor Swift has changed the lyrics to the newly recorded version of the song “Better Than Revenge,” which is part of her album “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) released on Friday.
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The original version of the song – supposedly a revenge song against an anonymous actress who ‘stole’ her then-boyfriend Joe Jonas – states: “She’s an actress, whoa / She’s best known for the stuff she does on the mattress, whoa.
The new version Swift changed the line to “He was a flame moth, she held the matches.”
Apparently, Swift let time and changing perspectives sway her decisions about what’s acceptable. Earlier, she asked fans not to harass the subject of her song “Dear John,” allegedly about her injury from a relationship with singer-songwriter John Mayer.
In a 2014 interview with The Guardian, Taylor, 25, talked about “Better Than Revenge.” Even then, she had regrets.
“I was 18 when I wrote this. That’s the age you think someone can actually take your boyfriend. Then you grow up and realize that no one can take someone away from you. he doesn’t want to leave.
Jill Scott was also a teenager when she rewrote a popular song. In Scott’s case, it was the “star-spangled banner” that got a new take.
R&B singer and actor Scott has blasted America for changing the lyrics to the national anthem, accusing the United States of oppressing black Americans.
Scott performed the altered anthem on his tour, but his high-profile performance at the Essence Fest in New Orleans eventually caught the eye.
“Oh say, can you see, by the blood in the streets,” Scott began. “May this place not smile upon you, child of color.”
The song ends with a revised closing line: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave”, along with “This is not the land of the free but the home of the slaves”.
Essence, the lifestyle magazine hosting the festival, wrote on its Twitter account“Everyone, please stand up for the only national anthem we will recognize from this day forward. Jill Scott, we thank you!
In Scott’s case, she wrote the song when she was a 19-year-old teenager in Philadelphia.
In March, at her concert in Philadelphia, Scott said she hoped her rendition of the anthem wouldn’t divide people.
“When I sing ‘house of the slave’ it’s not meant to divide, because division isn’t what we need,” Scott said. “When I say that, we’re in a place that makes us slaves to consumerism, that makes us slaves to social media, that makes us slaves to lies that don’t make sense, but we follow the stories like suckers, like slaves, to any type of negativity that does not benefit us as a people, as a culture or as a society.
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