Taylor Swift fans have apparently got Australian musician Sia in their sights, having accused her of blackface after she shared a message of support for Scooter Braun.

Yesterday, the world of music woke up to news that Taylor Swift and music entrepreneur Scooter Braun are at war over a new acquisition deal which saw the manager gain control of Swift’s music.

Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Records – the label Taylor Swift released all of her albums on up until 2019 – for $300 million, effectively meaning that the rights to all of Swift’s music is now in his control.

Swift described the situation as a “worst case scenario” on Tumblr, claiming that Braun was responsible for “incessant, manipulative bullying” over the years.

As one would expect, this was a rather divisive topic, with Justin Bieber – himself a client of manager – and Braun’s wife Yael Cohen weighing in on the situation, noting that Swift had been told about all of this previously and that she was overreacting.

Soon though, a number of other big-name artists made their stance clear, aligning themselves as either Team Taylor or Team Scooter, with arguments being made for each side.

Iggy Azalea was one artist who helped break down the situation, explaining it from the side of Taylor Swift.

“I think from what I can see; it’s more about the fact they didn’t even give her the opportunity to at least bid on her own masters; when she’s made it known she wanted to purchase,” Azalea noted. “I can totally understand where she’s coming from.”

“Telling someone about a deal days before it’s public means the deal was already done & she never had the opportunity to even make a bid to own her own work. These deals take months to negotiate in long form.

However, one artist who also shared their support for Scooter Braun was Adelaide-born Sia, who took to Twitter to write: “You’re a good kind man Scooter Braun I hope this passes quickly. I love you keep going.”

Almost immediately, this drew the ire of Taylor Swift fans who attempted to dig up dirt on Sia as a way of attacking her position.

As it turned out, one of the accusations levelled against Sia was that she had participated in blackface over the years.

Back in 2016, Sia was indeed at the centre of a blackface controversy, having been accused of such an act in the video for her song ‘The Greatest’, which featured children whose faces were painted in dark colours.

However, while this generated a lot of talk online, the current controversy surrounds an undated image of the artist that has surfaced online, showing her with black face paint on.

Denying accusations of blackface, Sia shared a video of a hometown performance from 2011, noting that the picture had been taken after one of these performances.

“For the Swift fans trying to make out that I would ever do blackface please see this video,” Sia wrote on Twitter. “I was painting myself into the backdrop, it was a pre cursor to the wig.”

Despite this explanation, a large portion of Taylor Swift fans have continued to dig into Sia on social media, labelling her as “cancelled” in the wake of this controversy, while others have taken the musician’s Tweet as a reasonable explanation of the situation.

Whatever your point of view on all this is, it seems as though this won’t be an issue that is resolved swiftly.

Check out ‘The Greatest’ by Sia:

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