Last week, there was a lot of discussion on Taylor Swift and her re-recordings. This week, crickets. Nothing. It’s amazing how fast news rises and dies. And I’m surprised at how many different views people have on it.

In the end it’s all about control.

In metal and rock circles, these kind of re-recordings have been happening from when I could remember.

Def Leppard created forgeries of a few of their songs in the last 10 years so they could be on streaming services as they were having a contractual dispute with the label over the payments they should be getting from digital services.

Any artist that ends up on Frontiers Records, ends up doing forgeries of their classic songs. Check out this Frontiers list of a whose who ofre-recorded classics.

Jeff Lynne re-recorded a lot of ELO songs and released them as a solo album with the title, “Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra.”

Stryper re-recorded their best off and called it “Second Coming” album.

Whitesnake had their biggest hit by re-recording an earlier song in 1987 which was on Geffen Records and as a Frontiers artist David Coverdale re-recorded his Deep Purple era and released it as a Whitesnake album.

Journey re-recorded the majority of their classics with Arnel Pineda and released these re-recorded songs with an album of new material as a bonus disc.

Pretty Maids did the same with “Louder Than Ever” in which they left the “sacred” albums of “Future World” and “Jump The Gun” alone but took songs from the others.

Trixter did it with a few songs on each of their Frontiers albums.

Kid Rock said in 2012 that he will re-recording his 12x Platinum smash, “Devil without a Cause” so that he will own the rights to the new versions.

Styx re-recorded some of their classics plus a couple of Damn Yankees songs with the “Regeneration: Volume I and II” releases.

Dokken (the version with Don Dokken on vocals, Jon Levin on guitars, Barry Sparks on bass and Mick Brown on drums) re-recorded the classics from the 80’s and released those versions as a “Greatest Hits” package in 2010. Maybe the title of the album should have been “Greatest Re-Recorded Hits”

KISS also re-recorded their classic songs with current members Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer and released em as a bonus disc with “Sonic Boom”.

Arch Enemy went down this route to re-record classic songs from their first three albums with their new singer. Fans who liked the original albums didn’t like the forgeries while people who discovered the band during the Angela Gossow period, didn’t care.

Any person who purchased a “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band” game, most likely supported an artist who had re-recorded their song because the master went missing, or something was wrong with the master or because they wanted to have control of the higher license payment for the songs that appeared on the games.

And let’s not forget what the Osbourne camp did with “Blizzard Of Ozz” and “Diary Of A Madman” by taking out Kerslake and Daisley from the recordings and getting their parts re-done by the current members at the time in Mike Bordin and Rob Trujilo. Bordin expressed regret at doing it many years later.