Show Notes
Scooter Braun reflects on how he became one of pop music’s most powerful kingmakers, helping to engineer the careers of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande—and the controversies that reshaped his public image, from Kanye West’s antisemitic spiral, which ended their relationship, to the Taylor Swift masters dispute that turned Braun into one of the internet’s biggest villains.
Braun says he barely knew Swift personally and argues the feud was flattened into a simplified tale that painted him as an exploiter in a story far more complicated than the public understood. He opens up about the intensity of the backlash—and how the online fury pushed him into a suicidal low point.
They also discuss the changing economics of music, celebrity, fandom, and power in the social media era. Plus: why Braun thinks Spencer Pratt could actually become mayor of Los Angeles, and how he felt watching most of the music industry stay silent after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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