Scooter Braun isn't leaving any room for gossip to breathe. The music industry titan has addressed the longstanding rumors that his split from his ex-wife, Yael Cohen, served as the muse for Taylor Swift's 2022 tune "Vigilante Shit." This song narrates a tale where the "Cruel Summer" crooner aids a jilted lady in exacting revenge on her heartless spouse. For Scooter, there's a compelling reason why the track couldn't possibly mirror his and Yael's dissolution in 2021, following seven years of matrimony. "Me and Yael talk every day," the 44-year-old clarified during a July 17 episode of the Question Everything podcast. "My ex-wife is one of my closest friends. So, we just laugh off such rumors."
In fact, Scooter, who shares sons Jagger, 9, Levi, 7, and Hart, 5, with Yael, revealed that they prefer not to label each other as "exes." "She's the mother of my children," he emphasized. "She's my family for life. After our divorce, I got a tattoo on my finger that says 'same team' because she and I are on the same team forever. That's our mantra."
Despite "everyone else fanning the flames" of the rumor, Scooter insisted that he "never thought it was about us." "A clever PR move, perhaps, but definitely not the case," added the former manager.
When "Vigilante Shit" debuted in 2022, numerous fans conjectured that the song was rooted in Taylor's long-standing rift with Scooter, who finalized his divorce from Yael that very year. The Grammy winner had accused Scooter of "stealing her life's work" after his company Ithaca Holdings acquired her original label, Big Machine Records, in 2019, thus gaining ownership of her first six albums' masters. (Three years hence, he sold these rights to Shamrock Capital.)
"She demanded solid evidence, so I provided her with some," Taylor belts out in the song's second verse from her Midnights album. "She had the envelope; do you wonder where she sourced it? Now she owns the house, the kids, and her dignity. Imagine me colluding closely with your ex-wife."
While Taylor has never explicitly named anyone as her inspiration for the track, she has since reclaimed ownership of her masters—an achievement she underscored wouldn't have materialized if Scooter had been on the receiving end of the deal.
"I'm eternally grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the pioneers in offering me this," she penned in a letter on her website announcing the purchase on May 30. "Their approach in all our interactions has been honest, equitable, and respectful. To them, it was a straightforward business transaction, but for me, it represented so much more: my recollections, my toil, my lyrics, and my lifelong dreams." She further quipped, "My first tattoo might just be an enormous shamrock emblazoned on my forehead."
