The Enduring Saga: Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and the "Famous" Controversy

The American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and the American rapper Kanye West have been involved in highly publicized disputes since September 2009. This long-standing feud has spanned over a decade, marked by public confrontations, controversial song lyrics, leaked phone calls, and media frenzies. Two songs, “thanK you aIMee” and “Cassandra,” appeared to reference the long-standing feud surrounding Kardashian, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and Swift, adding more chapters to the cataclysmic saga involving the three of them.

The Spark: 2009 MTV Video Music Awards

This is the moment that started it all. On September 13, 2009, Swift and West separately attended the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. A 19-year-old Swift won the award for Best Female Video at the MTV VMAs for “You Belong With Me.” Just as she took the stage to secure her Moon Man, Kanye West approached and grabbed the mic. “I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” he said. Swift was left stunned on stage. Swift left the stage amidst booing, which she thought was aimed at her. Later in the evening, Beyoncé invited Swift to complete her speech after winning Video of the Year for "Single Ladies".

West was widely criticized on television and media outlets. The day after the VMAs, West made a pre-planned appearance on The Jay Leno Show. He apologized to Swift, stating "It's been extremely difficult. I'm just dealing with the fact that I hurt someone or took anything away [...] from a talented artist or from anyone, 'cause I only wanted to help people [...] I immediately knew in this situation that it was wrong [...] It's actually someone's emotions that I stepped on and it was very, it was just, it was rude, period. And [...] I'd like to be able to apologize to her in person." Two days after the VMAs, Swift appeared on ABC Radio to say West apologized for stealing her moment at the VMAs. “Kanye did call me and he was very sincere in his apology, and I accepted that apology,” she shared. On September 15, 2009, Swift appeared on The View, explaining that West had still not called her personally to apologize. Following the episode, The View released a statement saying, West "spoke personally to the country music superstar via telephone and has apologized to the 19-year-old singer. She has accepted Mr. West's apology."

A year after West stole the mic from Swift, she took the same stage to perform a song called “Innocent” that would be on her album “Speak Now” coming in October. Critics interpreted Swift's 2010 song "Innocent" as sympathizing with West. The lyrics included this line, which fans believe is Swift addressing West: “It’s OK, and life is a tough crowd / 32 and still growing up now / Who you are is not what you did / You’re still an innocent.”

However, the truce was short-lived. In June 2013, Kanye West seemed to take back his apology to Taylor Swift in an interview. The New York Times interviewed Kanye West in a story tied to the release of his 2013 album “Yeezus.” Asked about Taylor Swift, the VMAs incident and if he has regrets, West said: “If anyone’s reading this waiting for some type of full-on, flat apology for anything, they should just stop reading right now.” When the reporter pointed out that he did already apologize for the VMAs, he responded: “Yeah, I think that I have like, faltered, you know, as a human. My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.”

A Brief Truce and a Renewed Feud: The "Famous" Era (2015-2016)

Six years after the VMAs incident, it seemed West and Swift had put their feud to rest. Swift said in the Sept. 2015 edition of Vanity Fair: “I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with him until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me, and he wasn’t ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me - so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time.” In late August, Kanye West and Taylor Swift found themselves, again, where it all started: at the VMAs. Swift appeared on stage to present West the Video Vanguard Award, which is like a lifetime achievement recognition from MTV. She ended her speech by saying, "I guess I have to say to all the other winners tonight: I'm really happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but Kanye West has had one of the greatest careers of all time!" Swift was upset by his comments since he had asked her to present the award, later reflecting on the incident and calling him "two-faced".

The amicable period was shattered in February 2016 when West’s album “The Life of Pablo” came out. The record included a song called “Famous,” with a lyric referencing Taylor Swift. One of these led to a Reddit thread hinting that West would be insulting Taylor Swift in the song “Famous.” It even quoted lyrics from an early version of the song: “I feel like Taylor Swift still owe me sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” The line had changed to the current lyrics (“I feel like me and Taylor still might have sex”) by the time West performed the song at Madison Square Garden one day after the Reddit user posted that thread, but a leaked demo of the song that dropped on YouTube and Soundcloud (it has since been taken down) yesterday reveals that the original version of the lyric did, in fact, exist.

The pop star's team said that Ye "did not call for approval," E! News reported at the time. A few days after the release of “The Life of Pablo,” Swift was at the Grammys accepting her album of the year award for “1989.” In her speech, she seemed to address Kanye West. “I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame,” she said. “If you just focus on the work, and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going, you’ll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world.”

Kim Kardashian's Intervention and the Public Outcry (2016)

In the summer of 2016, Kim Kardashian - who was married to Kanye West at the time - appeared in a GQ cover spread. In the interview, she told a reporter that Swift “totally approved” of the controversial lyric in West’s “Famous.” “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 s- for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved,” she said. In the portion of the call Kardashian West released, West does ask Swift for approval of the line “I feel like me and Taylor still might have sex” (as opposed to the missing “that bitch” approval to which Swift took umbrage). She calls it “provocative” and says “Go with whatever version of the line you want; it’s obviously very tongue-in-cheek either way.” It’s unclear if she heard the original version of the line, or another altered version.

Kanye West released a music video for “Famous” that included sculptures of various stars in the nude or beneath a blanket, including Chris Brown, Donald Trump and Taylor Swift. The music video for "Famous" depicted wax figures of himself, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Anna Wintour, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Ray J, Amber Rose, Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby all sleeping naked in a shared bed. The video was filmed over a period of three months and went through four different versions prior to the finalized version. West did not reveal which of the celebrities' bodies in the video were real and which ones were prosthetic; however, he stated that the video was "not in support or [against] any of [the people in the video]" and was merely "a comment on fame".

In an effort to defend her then-husband, Kim Kardashian uploaded to her Snapchat a video that she said was taken prior to the release of “The Life of Pablo.” It showed Kanye West on speaker phone with Taylor Swift, and she appeared to give approval of the lyrics to “Famous.” The video quickly went viral on social media, with many siding with Kardashian and tweeting the hashtag “#KimExposedTaylorParty” and using snake emoji. On the same day as the video's release, Kardashian tweeted about National Snake Day, saying "They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days! 🐍". This tweet was interpreted as being aimed at Swift, and the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsASnake became trending.

In response, Swift had said in a now-deleted Instagram post: “I wanted to believe Kanye when he told me that I would love the song. I wanted us to have a friendly relationship. He promised to play the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard. Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination. I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be part of, since 2009.” The backlash led Swift to retreat from the public, she claimed. “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."

The "Reputation" Era: Reclaiming the Narrative (2017)

Taylor Swift famously went off the grid after Kim Kardashian leaked her phone call with Kanye West and avoided the public eye for about a year. In August 2017, she deleted all content from her social media and surprise announced a new album called “Reputation.” The album evoked dark imagery and a dramatic use of snakes, which fans took to mean as Swift reclaiming accusations of being a “snake” when Kim Kardashian leaked that phone call. Swift utilized snake imagery in promotional material for her sixth studio album, Reputation (2017).

When “Reputation” dropped in November 2017, a track called “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” appeared to address Kanye West and the leaked phone call. The lyrics included the lines: “There I was giving you a second chance / If only you weren’t so shady / But you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand / And therein lies the issue / Friends don’t try to trick you / Get you on the phone and mind-twist you.” The music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" premiered at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. The video had Swift wearing her 2009 VMAs outfit, referenced video editing and "playing the victim", and repeated the line "I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative" from her 2016 statement. In one scene, Swift is in a bathtub filled with diamonds.

The Truth Unveiled: 2020 Phone Call Leak

In September 2019, Taylor Swift reflected on the Kanye West feud in Rolling Stone. “The world didn’t understand the context and the events that led up to it,” Swift told the magazine. “Because nothing ever just happens like that without some lead-up. Some events took place to cause me to be pissed off when he called me a b-.”

An unedited, 25-minute version of Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s phone call that Kim Kardashian posted years before was leaked online in early 2020. The full video recording of the phone call between West and Swift leaked online in 2020, revealing Swift had approved to be name-dropped but was not informed about the lyrics and the pejorative used, and that Kardashian has edited the clip favorably. In the video, West shares a planned lyric along the lines of “I made her famous,” but neglects the “b-” reference that ended up in the final song. In fact, in the unedited phone call, Swift even appears to be happy that West doesn’t use such language: “I thought it was going to be like, ‘That stupid, dumb b-.’ But it’s not,” she is heard saying. She does tell West that she’s glad the reference isn’t “mean” but would like to mull on it before giving her approval: “I need to think about it, because you know, when you hear something for the first time, you just need to think about it. Because it is absolutely crazy. I’m glad it’s not mean, though.”

Shortly after the full phone call between Taylor Swift and Kanye West leaked online, Kim Kardashian tweeted a response to provide her side of the story. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission,’” her tweet said. “They clearly spoke so I let you all see that. Nobody ever denied the word ‘b-’ was used without her permission...”

On December 6, the singer reflected on the incident during her interview with TIME, which named her 2023’s Person of the Year. “Make no mistake, my career was taken away from me,” she revealed. "that took me down psychologically to a place I've never been before..." Swift addressed the controversy in an interview with Time in December 2023, calling it "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."

New Chapters: "The Tortured Poets Department" (2024)

The bad blood between Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian appears to live on well into the pop star's 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.” When the album was released on April 19, Swifties quickly dissected the lyrics on the extended LP, which included a total of 31 songs. Two songs, “thanK you aIMee” and “Cassandra,” appeared to reference the long-standing feud surrounding Kardashian, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and Swift, adding more chapters to the cataclysmic saga involving the three of them.

Swift begins "thanK you aIMee" by telling her foe that she imagines there is a "bronze, spray-tanned statue of you/ and a plaque underneath it that threatens to push me down the stairs at our school." Swift reveals in the chorus that she has no intentions of forgiving "aIMee." Instead, she sings, "Screamed, 'F--- you, Aimee' to the night sky as the blood was gushin’/ But I can’t forget the way you made me heal." The Grammy-winner then references her mom, Andrea Swift, in one of the song's most startling lines. She says, "Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman/ But she used to say she wished that you were dead." Many fans found the most compelling clues that indicate the song is about Kardashian in the third verse. "I don’t think you’ve changed much/ And so I changed your name and any real defining clues/ And one day, your kid comes home singin’/ A song that only us two is gonna know is about you," Swift says.

The references to Kardashian and Ye are slightly more subtle in "Cassandra." Swift recalls in the opening verse the day she was walking in her house and "got the call," seemingly referring to Ye phoning her to discuss the "Famous" lyrics. Swift likens the public reaction to her seemingly supporting the controversial lyrics to getting stones thrown at her and hearing cries to "burn the b----." "When the truth comes out, it’s quiet," she said, which could refer to the full audio from the phone call later being released. "So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say/ Do you believe me now?" she asks in the chorus. Kardashian previously used a snake emoji to refer to Swift on Instagram and the singer turned it into a symbol of her rebirth during her "Reputation" era. In the bridge, Swift says, "They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time/ That I was onto somethin’/ The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line/ They all said nothin’/ Blood’s thick, but nothin’ like a payroll/ Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul/ You can mark my words that I said it first." Fans think the "family" Swift alludes to could be the wider Kardashian family and how they feel about Ye following his divorce from Kardashian in November 2022.

Timeline of the Feud

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