Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West: A Beef History
Updated August 2017
By fall 2015, many of us mistakenly believed that the longstanding feud between Kanye West and Taylor Swift had finally reached an end. The clash started at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009, when West leapt onstage to interrupt Swift’s acceptance speech. It seemed to have concluded on that same stage, when Taylor presented Kanye with Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2015 VMAs. Then, in February, came Kanye’s infamously nasty lines on “Famous” – “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ “Why? I made that bitch famous.” And in June, he unveiled a video for the song featuring a nude prosthetic replica of Taylor. Then Kim got involved and the gloves really came off. And then, in August 2017, Taylor ended her musical hiatus with a song (“Look What You Made Me Do”) that really, really seems like a Kanye diss track. We used to ask “How will this all end?” Now we just wonder, “Will it all end?”
September 13th, 2009: Kanye Interrupts Taylor’s VMAs Speech
In 2009 Taylor Swift was a 19-year-old country star whose latest album, Fearless, was also a hit with mainstream pop fans. Her video for “You Belong With Me” beat out Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” for Best Female Video, and she went to the stage to accept the award. So far, so good. Then Kanye, as we all remember, jumped onstage, grabbed the mic, and said, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!” Kanye was booed, and celebrities quickly rallied behind Swift, including the President of the United States himself (“He’s a jackass,” Obama shrugged) and Beyoncé herself, who invited Swift onstage with her when accepting her Video of the Year award later that night.
West wrote an apologetic blog post, which he yanked, then wrote another, then finally express his regret on The Jay Leno Show, saying he was ashamed. He later contacted Swift to apologize by phone. But by this point, “interrupting Kanye” and his “I’mma let you finish” were internet memes and the incident had become one of the most parodied awards show moments, as Kanye might say, of all time. Of all time.
September 2010: Kanye Apologizes on Twitter, Taylor Debuts “Innocent”
A year later, Kanye fired off a lengthy, apologetic tweet storm, saying he’d written her a song that he’d record himself if she didn’t want it, and he concluded with a simple “I’m sorry Taylor.” But Swift had a song of her own that seemed to address the controversy, “Innocent,” which she premiered at that year’s VMAs. That ballad, which walked a fine line between forgiving and condescending, would also appear on Swift’s album, Speak Now. (Cynics might note that this feud flares up when there’s an award show on the horizon, or one of the artists in question has a new album to promote.)
November 5th, 2010: Kanye Backtracks on Apology
The controversy seemed to have died down after that, but in an interview with Access Hollywood in October 2010, West listed Swift’s Fearless among recent albums that should not have won the Grammy for Album of the Year. And as interviewers kept mentioning the VMA incident, West struggled to explain and sometimes defend it. On Minnesota radio station KDWB in November, he claimed his actions were not “arrogant” but “selfless.” He also claimed that the event benefitted Swift, saying that he helped her “have 100 magazine covers and sell a million [her] first week.”
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