Taylor Swift and Jill Scott change song lyrics and spark controversy for different reasons – Deadline – News Block

Two artists. Two sets of letters. Two controversies loom.

Taylor Swift has changed the lyrics of the newly recorded version of the song “Better Than Revenge”, part of her album “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), released on Friday.

The original version of the song, supposedly a revenge song against an unnamed actress who “stole” then-boyfriend Joe Jonas, reads: “She’s an actress, wow / She’s best known for the things she does on the mattress, wow “.

The new version of Swift has changed the line to “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.”

Swift has apparently let time and changing perspectives influence her decisions about what’s acceptable. Previously, she asked fans of hers not to harass the subject of her song “Dear John,” supposedly about her grief over her relationship with singer-songwriter John Mayer.

In a 2014 interview with The GuardianTaylor, 25, spoke about “Better Than Revenge.” Even then, she regretted it.

“I was 18 years old when I wrote that. That’s how old you are when you think someone can actually take your boyfriend. Then you grow up and realize that no one can take someone away from you if 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 she received a new version of.

R&B singer and actor Scott criticized the United States by changing the lyrics of the national anthem, accusing the United States of oppressing African-Americans.

Scott has been performing the altered anthem on tour, but his high-profile performance at Essence Fest in New Orleans finally turned heads.

“Oh tell me, you can see, by the blood on the streets,” Scott began. “Don’t let this place smile on you, colored girl.”

The song ends with a revised closing line: “Over the land of the free and the home of the brave”, with “This is not the land of the free but the home of the slaves”.

Essence, the lifestyle magazine that organizes the festival, wrote in its Twitter account“Everyone please get up to listen to the only National Anthem we will recognize from this day on. 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 his concert in Philadelphia, Scott said he hoped his performance of the anthem wouldn’t divide people.

“When I sing ‘home of the slave,’ I don’t intend to divide, because division is not what we need,” Scott said. “When I say that, we are in a place that makes us slaves to consumerism, makes us slaves to social media, makes us slaves to lies that make no sense, but we follow the stories like idiots. , as slaves, of any type of negativity that does not benefit us as a people, as a culture or as a society”.