She always has a trick up her sleeve. Taylor Swift outsmarted Scooter Braun with a “Look What You Made Me Do” cover, and we can’t help but stan. Here’s what happened: On Sunday, May 24, Taylor shouted out a cover of her song 2017 “Look What You Made Me Do” on her Twitter. The song was featured in the credits of the most recent episode of Killing Eve. “VERY STOKED about this cover of lwymmd on @KillingEve by Jack leopards & the dolphin club!!” Taylor tweeted.
As Swifties know, this behavior isn’t unusual. The 10-time Grammy winner has promoted covers of her songs for years, but what makes this cover interesting is the band who performed it: Jack Leopards & the Dolphin Club. After Taylor’s tweet, fans looked up the band on Apple Music, Spotify and other apps to discover that Jack Leopards & the Dolphin Club only has one song credited to their name, which is the “LWYMMD” cover. Further, the cover was produced by artist named Nils Sjosberg, which was the pseudonym Taylor used on her ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris’ 2016 track “This Is What You Came For.”
So…what’s the deal with the cover? Well, fans think it was a way for Taylor to outsmart Scooter Braun, who purchased the rights to her first six albums from Big Machine Records, her former record label, in 2019. The deal would prevent her from re-recording her old music and, in some cases, performing her old songs. (Long story short, there was a huge debacle before the 2019 American Music Awards, where Taylor suggested that Scooter wasn’t allowing her to perform a medley of her old songs.)
Given that “LWYMMD” is from her 2017 album, Reputation, fans believe that the Killing Eve cover of the song was a loophole for Taylor to re-record her old music without breaking any rules. Further, fans also believe that the male voice in the cover could be Swift’s brother, Austin Swift, after an old Daily Mail article which reported that Swift asked Killing Eve‘s creator Phoebe Waller Bridge to include Austin on the show’s soundtrack resurfaced.
As of now, none of this has been confirmed by T-Swift herself, but fans sure have their theories.