Scooter Braun Says He “Legitimately” Doesn’t Know Taylor Swift And Opens Up About Justin Bieber

For years, Scooter Braun was one of the most powerful (and hated) men in pop music. He discovered the 13-year-old Justin Bieber on YouTube, helped launch Ariana Grande into superstardom, managed Kanye West during some of his chaotic years, and spent over a decade shaping pop culture. Now people know him as the villain in the industry.

In a rare interview with The Free Press, Braun told his side of the story. He opened up about the Taylor Swift fallout, the internet hate he’s received, and a little bit about his girlfriend, Sydney Sweeney. 

Scooter Braun and Justin Bieber

Braun was a young manager who discovered JB singing Ne-Yo covers on YouTube. He became convinced he was looking at the future of pop music. “Sometimes you get a download,” Braun told Free Press writer Suzy Weiss. “A blueprint just gets sent into your head, and it’s so clear what you should be doing.”

Braun has said before that he saw Bieber as “the 21st century’s answer to a young Michael Jackson,” and honestly, looking back at the Bieber Fever era, it’s hard to argue with him.

The two became inseparable professionally for years. Braun was there for the explosive rise, the mall mobs, the sold-out tours, and eventually the public breakdowns, too. During Bieber’s roughest years, Braun repeatedly defended him in public while trying to help stabilize things behind the scenes. At one point, Braun admitted he worried Bieber “could’ve died” during the chaos surrounding the Purpose era and the years leading up to it. Even now, Braun still talks about Bieber less like a former client and more like someone he genuinely cared about protecting. “I wasn’t a seasoned businessman,” Braun said while reflecting on the early Bieber years. “The machine is me and a laptop.”

The relationship between Braun and Bieber has reportedly become far more strained in recent years. Multiple outlets reported that Bieber’s team accused Braun of taking excessive commissions during their longtime business relationship, with TMZ later claiming Bieber believed Braun had been “grossly overpaid” by millions tied to tour finances and management deals. Braun and HYBE disputed the allegations, with internal audits reportedly finding Bieber actually still owed Braun money. The messy financial fallout eventually resulted in a reported multimillion-dollar settlement between the two camps in 2025.

The Taylor Swift Masters Fight Changed His Entire Reputation

Braun’s public image shifted permanently in 2019 when Taylor Swift condemned his acquisition of Big Machine Records, which included the masters to her first six albums. Swift accused Braun of years of “manipulative bullying” connected to both Kanye West and Justin Bieber, reigniting old internet drama that had already followed her for years. Almost overnight, Braun stopped being viewed as a successful manager and started being framed online as the face of everything fans hated about the music industry.

Now, years later, Braun still sounds stunned by how personal the backlash became.

“I legitimately don’t know her,” he said in the interview.

What made the situation so explosive was that it stopped being about contracts almost immediately. It became fandom warfare. Swifties treated Braun like a permanent supervillain while old clips involving Kanye West, Bieber, and Selena Gomez resurfaced all over again.

Braun, ironically, helped build the exact kind of online stan culture that eventually swallowed him whole. “We involved them so intimately in the building that they are just as responsible for the success of these artists as I was,” Braun said while discussing internet fandoms.

He Quietly Opened Up About Hitting Rock Bottom

Surprisingly, Braun also opened up about what was happening in his personal life while the internet spent years tearing him apart. In 2021, he said he experienced “a single 20-minute-long suicidal thought.” The following year, he divorced his wife, and by 2024, he had officially stepped away from artist management.

These days, Braun sounds far removed from the hyper-connected music mogul image that defined much of his career. Instead, he comes across more reflective about fame, burnout, relationships, and the emotional toll of years spent at the center of nonstop celebrity chaos.

He also briefly addressed his rumored relationship with Sydney Sweeney, though he kept details vague.

“I’ve met an extraordinary woman,” Braun said, calling her “kind and generous and smart and real and down-to-earth.” He added that the relationship has been “one of the biggest surprises ever.”

To this day, Braun seems aware that for many people, the public narrative around him may never fully change. As he put it himself, “Sometimes I feel like I’m the conspiracy theory behind half the internet.”