Scooter Braun isn’t leaving any blank space for rumors.
The music mogul addressed longtime speculation that he and his ex-wife Yael Cohen were the inspiration for Taylor Swift‘s 2022 song “Vigilante S–t,” which tells the story of the “Cruel Summer” singer helping a scorned woman get revenge on her cruel husband.
And for Scooter, there’s one major reason he says the track can’t be based on what went down between him and Yael when they broke up in 2021 following seven years of marriage.
“‘Cause me and Yael talk every day,” the 44-year-old explained during a July 17 episode of the Question Everything podcast. “My ex-wife is one of my best friends. So, me and my ex-wife laugh at that stuff.”
In fact, Scooter—who shares kids Jagger, 9, Levi, 7, and Hart, 5, with Yael—said he and his former partner don’t even like to refer to each other as “ex.”
“That’s the mother of my children,” he said. “That is my family for life. I have a tattoo on my finger that says ‘same team’ after my divorce because she and I are the same team for life. It’s what we say to each other.”
And despite “everyone else kind of feeding into the fire” of the rumor, Scooter emphasized that he “never thought it was about us.”
“Great strategy move,” the former manager added, “but no.”
David Fisher/Shutterstock; Marc Patrick/BFA.com/ShutterstockWhen “Vigilante S–t” dropped in 2022, many fans speculated the song was based on Taylor’s long-running feud with Scooter, who finalized his divorce from Yael the same year and had been accused by the Grammy winner of “stripping her of her life’s work” after his company Ithaca Holdings bought her original label Big Machine Records in 2019, ultimately gaining ownership of the masters for her first six albums. (Three years later, he sold the rights to Shamrock Capital.)
“She needed cold hard proof so I gave her some,” Taylor sings on the second verse of the Midnights song. “She had the envelope, where you think she got it from? / Now she gets the house, gets the kids, gets the pride / Picture me thick as thieves with your ex-wife.”
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for YouTube OriginalsAnd while Taylor has never named anyone specific as her inspiration for the song, she has since re-gained ownership of her masters—an accomplishment she made clear wouldn’t have happened if Scooter was on the other end of the deal.
“I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me,” she wrote in a letter on her website announcing the purchase May 30. “The way they’ve handled every interaction we’ve had has been honest, fair, and respectful. This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams.”
She added, “My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
