Taylor Swift's 2009 Diary Entry Reveals Her Response to Kanye West Crashing Her MTV VMAs Moment
It was a moment that would live in pop culture infamy for years: the image of a shell-shocked Taylor Swift standing helplessly on the MTV Video Music Awards stage as Kanye West ripped the microphone from her hands.
Now, 10 years later, Swift has given fans a glimpse into her thoughts and feelings on the night in question via her personal diary.
The “ME!” singer, 29, released her seventh album, Lover, on Friday, and included excerpts from her diaries as part of the deluxe version.
One of those entries, dated Sept. 18, 2009, was written five days after West crashed the stage as she won the award for female video of the year for “You Belong With Me.”
“Ahh… the things that can change in a week,” she wrote. “If you had told me that one of the biggest stars in music was going to jump on stage and announce that he thought I shouldn’t have won on live television, I would’ve said, ‘That stuff doesn’t really happen in real life’.”
“Well… apparently…. It does,” she ended the note.
Swift was 19 when the incident occurred, and West interrupted her mid-speech to declare that the win should have gone to Beyoncé for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).
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“Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’m a let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!” he said, before giving the mic back to Swift as MTV cut to a clip of Tracy Morgan and Eminem.
The rapper eventually apologized, writing in his blog, “I’m sooooo sorry to taylor swift and her fans and her mom. I spoke to her mother right after and she said the same thing my mother would’ve said. She is very talented! … I really feel bad for taylor and I’m sincerely sorry!”
Swift, meanwhile, used the incident to inspire the song “Innocent,” which she has long implied was written about West.
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In the liner notes for her album Speak Now, Swift wrote that “Innocent” was written as an “open letter” to someone she forgives for “what he said in front of the whole world.”
“I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him. But for me it was important to write a song to him,” she told New York magazine.
Years later, the two musicians would, of course, go on to feud even further when West referred to Swift as “that bitch” in his track “Famous,” and featured a nude version of the singer in its accompanying video.
Swift later said she never approved of the lyric “I made that bitch famous” after the rapper’s wife Kim Kardashian West leaked an edited phone call conversation between the two artists discussing the track.
“This summer is the apocalypse,” she wrote in an August 2016 diary entry amid her feud with the Wests.
