Taylor Swift has said that her past feud with Kim Kardashian impacted the singer “psychologically”, leaving her in “a place [she’d] never been before”.
The ‘Midnights’ pop star opened up about her dispute with Kardashian and Kanye West during a new interview with TIME magazine, which has named Swift its 2023 Person Of The Year.
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Swift claimed in 2020 that she was “framed” by West after the phone call she had with the rapper to discuss his 2016 track ‘Famous’ leaked online. The song in question features the line: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.”
The highly-publicised feud damaged Swift’s reputation, and would go on to inspire the title and themes of her 2017 sixth album. “My career was taken away from me,” she recalled during her conversation with TIME, explaining that it felt like “a career death”.
“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. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before.”
Swift continued: “I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
The singer went on to recall how ‘Reputation’ – which featured snake imagery – was met with uproar and skepticism. “I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she said.
.@samlansky has such a wondrous way with words, and I’ve loved reading his pieces for over a decade. If you’ve ever been around him, you know he’s just the best type of person: Curious. Interested. Hilarious. Intriguing and intrigued. I have tRuSt iSSueS when it comes to… pic.twitter.com/kAgIIcPI1f
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) December 6, 2023
The star also said that the dispute with West and Kardashian led to her “getting cancelled within an inch of my life and sanity”. Elsewhere in the interview, Swift described ‘Reputation’ – the follow-up to ‘1989’ – as “a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure”.
Speaking about the controversial ‘Famous’ lyric at the time of its release, Ye said that Swift had consented to its inclusion on a phone call. His then-wife Kardashian later released a video that appeared to support his version of events.
But a new clip subsequently emerged online, appearing to show that West seemingly told Swift a different line to the one that was eventually used in ‘Famous’. In response, the singer said this video proved she had been “telling the truth the whole time”.
She added that the first piece of footage had been “illegally recorded” and “edited and manipulated in order to frame me and put me, my family, and fans through hell for 4 years”.
READ MORE: Taylor Swift – ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ review: still her best album
Kardashian then took to social media to accuse her of “actually lying”, adding that ‘Famous’ “had not been fully written” at the time West and Swift spoke: “She manipulated the truth of their actual conversation in her statement when her team said she ‘declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message’.”
She continued: “The lie was never about the word bitch, It was always whether there was a call or not and the tone of the conversation. I never edited the footage (another lie).”
Back in 2009, West famously interrupted Swift’s speech at that year’s MTV VMAs.
Taylor Swift – 1989 (Taylor’s Version) Credit: Beth Garrabant
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 2019, Swift said she was “done” with the rapper after initially thinking they had overcome their rift: “I started to feel like we reconnected, which felt great for me because all I ever wanted my whole career after that thing happened in 2009 was for him to respect me.”
Swift also spoke to TIME magazine about her gruelling training preparation for the ‘Eras Tour’ and opened up about her public relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce.
Meanwhile, Swift has been named as the most powerful woman in media and entertainment by Forbes. Additionally, she was recently crowned as Spotify’s Top Global Artist of 2023.
Taylor Swift is set to bring her global ‘Eras Tour’ to Europe, the UK and Ireland in 2024. She’ll play eight shows at Wembley Stadium in London next summer, with Paramore due to support.
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