98 Degrees are planning to re-record some of their top hits and crediting Taylor Swift for inspiring the “get-your-masters-back move.”
Members Nick Lachey, Jeff Timmons, Drew Lachey, and Justin Jeffre wrapped their 25-year anniversary tour on Sunday, and spoke to E! News about the group’s big upcoming plans. “We’re actually in the studio now working on a new project,” Nick Lachey told the outlet. “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 while they’ve been discussing re-recording their music for a while, there were also “battles with the label.” And while he added the group thought it would be a “natural” move to re-record their work, “Taylor Swift sort of brought it to the forefront.”
“The fans have embraced that,” he pointed out. “And so we’re like, ‘OK, now’s the time to do it.’”
Drew Lachey also gave Swift kudos for giving other artists the confidence to retake ownership of their music.
“I feel like, almost before Taylor did it, it was like, ‘Oh, you’re re-recording the masters,’” explained the younger Lachey. “It was kind of like, ‘I’ll just stick with the original’ kind of thing. When she 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 August, Swift announced that she would be releasing 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on Oct. 27 — exactly nine years after the original came out on Oct. 27, 2014 — during the year’s last U.S. leg of the Eras Tour at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The 2014 album includes her three Number One singles — “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” and “Bad Blood” — and fan favorites “Out of the Woods” and “Clean.”
The powerhouse singer has been re-recording albums from her catalog that came out on Big Machine Records since 2019, when its former owner Scott Borchetta sold the label to music exec Scooter Braun. Swift told CBS News that year that she had a contentious relationship with Braun and that her intention was to re-record her music so she had control of the masters, since the originals now belonged to Braun. So far, she’s issued “Taylor’s Version” editions of Fearless, Red, and Speak Now — all of which debuted at Number One on Billboard’s albums chart.