With the heat of the 2023 Grammys seemingly wrapping up, fans are still reeling about the surprise attendees, performances, and winnings that encompassed the 65th Recording Academy awards. If you hadn’t already noticed, there were quite a few content creators present at the music award show, something that viewers have mixed reactions to. While everyone knows that the age of the influencer is well upon us, there’s one creator in particular that has had TikTok users perplexed and utterly confused about their involvement in the 2023 Grammys. Yes, I’m talking about @NoItsAshley13, aka Ashley the Taylor Swift lookalike. So, what’s the real tea behind Ashley’s alleged Grammys partnership controversy? I’m here to explain.
Ashley, who sports a following of 1.1 million on TikTok, is known for her uncanny resemblance to the one and only Swift. Really, one of her most popular videos has accumulated a massive 22.7 million views in which users cannot stop commenting about how much Ashley looks just like Swift… and how similar their cats look as well. While Ashley has never outright stated that she’s a Swift impersonator, it’s what many people online know her for.
Where does Ashley’s correlation to the Grammys come into play? Well, on Jan. 31, she posted a video (with Swift’s look-alike cat, mind you) announcing that she had “partnered with the Grammys” and that she would be heading to Los Angeles to attend the award show. She continued on stating that she was “most excited to see Taylor Swift,” hinting that she could possibly run into her on the red carpet.
It’s safe to say that users were confused about Ashley’s alleged partnership with the official Grammys, with many commenting on her video questioning the whole situation. So, it came as no surprise to many when Ashley then revealed that she would not be attending the show after already flying to LA. Yikes!
Ashley went on to post a series of explanation videos telling fans just how the whole fiasco came to be, so let’s take a look into what this creator says “really” went down.
Ashley announced that she was “partnering” with the Grammys.
As I previously mentioned, this controversy all started when Ashley posted a video on Jan. 31 announcing that she would be allegedly partnering with the Grammys this year.
Ashley revealed that she was told she was not going to be attending the Grammys even though she was already in LA.
This is where things seemingly take a turn for the TikToker. Ashley posted a video with a sound that said, “what’s your biggest fear?” to which she added text onto the post that explained that after posting content announcing her attendance, spending money on plane tickets and housing, and arriving in LA, that there were “no more tickets” and that she wasn’t going to be going to the 2023 Grammys.
She also posted another video in which she stitched her original announcement video in a hotel room with some luggage. Ashley captioned that video, “‘It’s Hollywood- it happens all the time’ they said… well I just landed in Los Angeles, but OK.”
She posted a ‘what happened with the Grammys’ series detailing what went down.
After facing the heat of many users on TikTok, Ashley took to TikTok to address all of the rumors circulating about her alleged attendance at the award show.
Get buckled up, because this is where things get even more confusing.
Sweety High reached out to Ashley and invited her to attend.
Ashley explained that the Gen-Z brand, Sweety High (who has 13.5 million followers alone on TikTok), initially reached out to her via DM to talk about the Grammys. They informed Ashley that they were partnering with the Grammys and wanted to discuss her potentially working with them. Her Campus reached out to Sweety High for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
From there, they had a phone call inviting Ashley to work with them where she was presumably told that her flight would be paid for, but that she would have to arrange her own lodging. She also said that the entire experience would entail compensation. Ashley went on to ask if she could bring her husband along, who she referred to as her acting manager, to which the brand did not know if they could do. However, it was then confirmed to Ashley that she would be one of the creators that would be invited to walk the red carpet.
The first contract got sent over.
On January 25, Ashley alleged she was sent over the first contract for her partnership with Sweety High. In her explainer videos, Ashley shared screenshots of almost all email exchanges between herself and Marion, a representative from Sweety High. The contract outlined the content that was expected of Ashley come Grammys day.
Because Ashley posted a screenshot of the contract in full, many users have pointed out one very important part of the document that the creator might have read over. The first line read, “I understand and agree that the Producer reserves the right to modify, reschedule, postpone, cancel and/or not utilize the Results and Proceeds of any Archival Results and Proceeds at any time, for any reason” which essentially means that the brand reserved the right to cancel the collaboration at any time.
Things took an awkward, sketchy turn.
Ashley wasn’t fully set on the first contract the brand sent over, so after speaking with her publicist, they sent back over a deal memo that she explains was to ensure that press would not mistake her as Swift, a document that Sweety High did not sign.
From there, a new contract was created where Ashley was encouraged to speak about Swift in hopes to get Swifties involved in the content. This was something that Ashley didn’t really want to do, and users are continuing to point out that these content incentives surrounding Swift were incredibly sketchy. Users have pointed out that in the screenshots that Ashley included, misspellings of “Swifties” and the name Taylor Swift not being capitalized were major red flags in this collaboration.
The deal fell through, big time.
After this, Ashley urges that Sweety High reps wanted to “pay her off,” offering $800 for canceling the entire partnership. This is when Ashley began posting her own videos revealing that she would, in fact, not be attending the Grammys after already arriving in LA.
Said that then they wanted to pay her $800 for canceling, to which she then made the videos on how everything was canceled.
Are you confused? Honestly, I still am. I was perplexed when I started seeing videos pop up on my FYP that seemingly mocked Ashley for lying about the whole debacle, so I had to see what was going on for myself. If this controversy has taught us (or really just creators) anything, it’s to have a lawyer look over your contracts, and to watch out for red flags that often emerge with “too good to be true” brand deals.