Few pop culture scandals have captivated audiences quite like the ongoing feud between Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, and Taylor Swift. Let’s unravel the sequence of events in a timeline of the feud in its entirety.
2009: The Beginning
Everything started in 2009 when Kim Kardashian expressed her affection for Taylor Swift in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. An interviewer inquired about the number one song on her iPod. She grinned profoundly and whispered “Love Story” by Swift before adding, “I love Taylor Swift! I’m the biggest Taylor Swift fan.” She continued saying how she was following Swift on Twitter before concluding with, “I’m watching you, Taylor!”
2009: The VMA Confrontation
The dispute between Swift and Kim began in 2009 during the MTV Video Music Awards.
During the ceremony, Kardashian’s ex-husband, Kayne West, reportedly interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech, claiming that Beyoncé was more deserving of the honor. “Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” The audience began booing Kayne, but Swift thought they were criticizing her.
West was rapidly met with criticism from celebrities and fans. In an off-the-record statement during a CNBC interview, then-President Barack Obama referred to the rapper as a “jackass” over the event.
Swift spoke on ABC Radio two days after the VMAs when she said West apologized for stealing her moment. “Kanye called me, and he was very sincere in his apology. I accepted that apology,” she said.
2010: Innocent
One year later, on October 25th, 2010, Taylor Swift released her song “Innocent” about Kayne West. In press interviews before the release of Speak Now, Swift stated that the album track “Innocent” had been devoted to rapper Kanye West.
Lyrics: You’re still an innocent/ Did some things you can’t speak of/ But at night you live it all again/ Your string of lights is still bright to me/ Oh, who you are is not where you’ve been/ You’re still an innocent/ It’s okay, life is a tough crowd/ 32 and still growin’ up now
Who you are is not what you did/ You’re still an innocent
2016: “Famous”
Kanye West revived the dispute in February 2016, over 6 years later, with the release of his song “Famous,” which included aggressive lyrics targeted at Taylor Swift.
The lines “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous (Goddamn)/ I made that bitch famous” sparked a blaze of controversy and sparked a public debate over whether Swift had authorized the lyrics.
Kim Kardashian clarified that Swift agreed with the statement, saying, “She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn’t. I swear, my husband gets so much [criticism] for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved.”
A significant portion of the discussion then centers on an alternate version of the lyric –
“Taylor Swift might owe me sex,” – which Swift argued against.
If West releases that version, she says, “The feminists are going to come out”.
West then said, “Okay, now what if later in the song I was also to have said, uh… ‘I made her famous?'”
Swift’s tone shifts noticeably when she answers, noting to West that she had sold millions of records by the time he interrupted her at the MTV Awards.
“Like, you honestly didn’t know who I was before that. Like, it doesn’t matter if I sold 7 million of that album [Fearless] before you did that, which is what happened. You didn’t know who I was before that. It’s fine.”
Swift’s representative told EW that Kanye did not request clearance but rather asked Taylor to put his song ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She rejected it, cautioning him against publishing a song with such a strong sexist message. Taylor was never informed of the actual line, ‘I made that bitch famous.’
The situation worsened when West included a nude waxwork of Swift in the song’s video.
2017: The Snapchat Bombshell
Kim Kardashian startled everyone by sharing a secretively recorded phone call between Kanye West and Taylor Swift on Snapchat. During the conversation, Swift appeared to agree with a misogynistic lyric in West’s song “Famous.” Swift, on the other hand, claimed that she was not completely aware of the song’s contents and felt misled by the altered recording. And stated that Kim had modified the video.
On a July 2016 episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the family went into great depth about West and Swift’s long-running feud, as well as West’s dramatic tirade on Saturday Night Live, in which he was filmed backstage calling Swift phony.
At the end of the show, Kardashian met with her mother, Kris Jenner, to address the contentious interview. Jenner attempted to play mediator, asking, “What would happen if you just called Taylor up and say ‘What happened? How did this go so south?’ I guess I don’t understand the motivation to flip … maybe she took it the wrong way. My advice would be to give Taylor Swift a call.”
“Thank you for your lovely advice,” Kardashian told her mother, “but I’m not going to take it.”She stated that during her GQ interview, she felt compelled to speak up for her husband. “I never talk s— about anyone publicly, especially in interviews. But I was just like, I had so had it,” she said “I wanted to defend him in it.”
2017: Reputation and Symbolic Imagery
Swift’s sixth studio album, Reputation, was announced nearly a year after Kardashian posted the recorded phone call. Swift teased the announcement by posting a series of enigmatic Instagram videos featuring a serpent. This looked to be her attempt to reclaim the snake emoji from her Instagram comments. (that was meant to imply that she was lying).
Swift told Time in December 2023, “Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me. You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar”
2023: Swift’s Revelation
Taylor Swift had an open interview with Time magazine in December 2023, discussing the feud’s influence on her career. She claimed feelings of betrayal as a result of the leaked phone call and accused Kim Kardashian of coordinating an attack against her.
Swift acknowledged the drama in the music video for the song’s lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” using different Easter eggs throughout.
In addition to the snake imagery, she had the statement “Et tu, Brute” from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar inscribed on her chair in allusion to West stabbing her in the back.
At the conclusion of the video, she acknowledged the controversy by showing numerous different “versions of herself” lined up in a row, including one who continued recording videos on her phone and stating, “I’m going to edit this later.”
2024: ‘thanK you aIMee’
Taylor Swift’s highly awaited album, The Tortured Poets Department, was released on April 19, 2024. On the album, there was a song called “thanK you aIMee” associated with Kim Kardashian.
Swift was not very subtle when she created the song, capitalizing the letters K, I, and M in the title.
Here are some of the lyrics:
All that time you were throwing punches/ I was building something/ And I couldn’t wait to show you it was real/ Screamed, “Fuck you, Aimee” to the night sky/ As the blood was gushing/ But I can’t forget the way you made me heal/ Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman/ But she used to say she wished that you were dead/ I pushed each boulder up the hill/ Your words are still just ringing in my head, ringing in my head/ I wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool/ I built a legacy that you can’t undo/ But when I count the scars, there’s a moment of truth/ That there wouldn’t be this if there hadn’t been you
Kardashian told US Weekly that she is past the fight and does not want to add fuel to the flames. The 43-year-old Kardashian star is furious that Swift still has harsh sentiments for her.
“Taylor has moved on and is not looking back,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly. “The song is her final word.”
