Why Taylor Swift Reportedly Turned Down Super Bowl Halftime Show

It was rumored this week that Taylor Swift had been offered the Super Bowl LVII halftime show this year. TMZ reports that those rumors were true, but she has turned it down. A source told the publication that Swift was asked to headline months ago, but the pop icon has no plans to perform until she finishes rerecording all of her first six albums.

Making a “Taylor’s Version” of all of her early work has been an ongoing project for Swift, who was quite vocal about her disapproval of producer Scooter Braun buying the rights to those albums back in 2019. Swift has accused Braun of being an “incessant, manipulative bully” and wrote on Tumblr at the time that him owning the rights to her work was her “worst case scenario.”

As the owner of these master recordings, Braun had the right to make, sell, or distribute copies. He chose to sell, making close to $300 million. Swift has been on a mission to make those master recordings worth slightly less by rerecording all of those albums. She has already released a rerecording of Red and Fearless.

The remaining four albums to record include her self-titled album, Taylor Swift, Speak Now, 1989, and Reputation. She supposedly would like to headline the Super Bowl halftime show someday, but at the earliest it would happen in 2024.

Until recently, the halftime show was sponsored by Pepsi, but the NFL sent out a press release saying sponsorship had been taken over by Apple Music. This is part of the reason why fans thought Swift might take the stage—she would never have been able to do it before, because she has an ongoing deal with Coca-Cola.

At the moment, the musician is pretty busy, having released two albums during 2020, Folklore and evermore, and announcing yet another album for release this October titled Midnights.