An Exhausting Timeline of Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s 10-Year Feud
Wow, isn‘t it great that in 2020, we’ve all finally moved on from Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s feud? Oh wait, sorry, it’s still happening. Much like Rob Kardashian’s line of socks, this feud refuses to give up and will presumably haunt us for years to come. Frankly, there are more twists and turns than my brain is emotionally prepared to deal with, so here, I laid it all out in a timeline for those of us too exhausted to remember the details.
September 13, 2009
Kanye West interrupts Taylor’s VMA speech, uttering the now iconic words “Imma let you finish but...” It’s extremely awkward for everyone involved, but especially me, cringing on my parents’ couch.
9 years ago today, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s VMA speech 😅 pic.twitter.com/bHtmPwD1Js
— Our Generation Music (@OGMusicCo) September 13, 2018
September 15, 2009
Kanye appears on The Jay Leno Show with an apology to Taylor, saying, “It was rude, period. I don’t try to justify it, ’cause I was in the wrong. Dealing with the fact that I hurt someone or took anything away, you know, from a talented artist—or from anyone—because I only wanted to help people.”
Meanwhile, Taylor speaks to ABC Radio and says, “Kanye did call me and he was very sincere in his apology, and I accepted that apology.”
The end! Kidding. *cries weakly*
September 13, 2010
Taylor debuts her new song “Innocent” at the VMAs, which features the lyric: “Who you are is not what you did / You’re still an innocent.” Everyone thinks this is Kanye West shade including the New York Times, who wrote that her performance was “an extremely savvy insult masquerading as the high road.”
June 11, 2013
Kanye backtracks on his apology during an interview with the New York Times, saying he was pressured into it. Uh. Kay.
February 8, 2015
Taylor and Kanye are spotted looking friendly backstage at the Grammys Awards. Things are looking up! Everything is gonna be okay!*
*No, it’s not.
August 30, 2015
Taylor gives Kanye a VMA Award! Everything is fine!*
*Kidding. Nothing is fine.
February 11, 2016
Kanye drops his new song “Famous,” which features the now-infamous lyric: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that bitch famous.”
But when he said he made Taylor famous 🙄 #YeezySeason3
— Terron (@TeeVanity) February 11, 2016
That same day, Taylor’s brother Austin not at all dramatically throws out his Yeezys on Instagram.
Getting a head start on some spring cleaning. Here we go again.
A post shared by Austin Swift (@austinkingsleyswift) on Feb 11, 2016 at 4:17pm PST
February 12, 2016
Taylor’s rep releases a statement saying she *never* approved the “Famous” lyrics, despite Kanye’s claims in a since-deleted Twitter rant that Taylor “thought it was funny and gave her blessings.”
FYI re Kanye/Taylor/"Famous" aka mom and dad broke up again
A post shared by joncaramanica (@joncaramanica) on Feb 11, 2016 at 9:37pm PST
February 16, 2016
Taylor wins Album of the Year at the Grammys and calls out Kanye onstage:
“As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who are going to try to undercut your success, or take credit for your accomplishments or fame, but you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you.”
February 23, 2016
In a video posted by TMZ, Kanye is seen at a nightclub and claims that when he told Taylor about the line “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” “she said, ‘Oooh, Kanye, I like that line.’ Then she won her award and said something completely different. She ain’t cool no more. She had two seconds to be cool and she f*cked it up.”
April 10, 2016
Kanye performs “Famous” and while onstage, he insists he “just said what everybody else was thinking” when he interrupted Taylor at the VMAs:
“If I get in trouble for saying the truth, what’s being said the rest of the time? And I had to fight every day of my life, with the whole world turned against me, for saying out loud what everyone else felt. But that’s the job of an artist, of a true artist: not to be controlled by their finances, not to be controlled by perceptions, but only to be controlled by their truth.”
June 16, 2016
Kim Kardashian’s GQ cover story comes out and she goes the f*ck off. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
“She totally approved that,” Kim says, shaking her head in annoyance. “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 shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved.” Kim is on a roll now, speaking faster and more animatedly than at any other point during our time together. “What rapper would call a girl that he was rapping a line about to get approval?”
And another:
Swift, Kim insists, “totally gave the okay. Rick Rubin was there. So many respected people in the music business heard that [conversation] and knew. I mean, he’s called me a bitch in his songs. That’s just, like, what they say. I never once think, [gasping] ‘What a derogatory word! How dare he?’ Not in a million years. I don’t know why she just, you know, flipped all of a sudden.…It was funny because [on the call with Kanye, Taylor] said, ‘When I get on the Grammy red carpet, all the media is going to think that I’m so against this, and I’ll just laugh and say, ‘The joke’s on you, guys. I was in on it the whole time.’ And I’m like, wait, but [in] your Grammy speech, you completely dissed my husband just to play the victim again.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Taylor Swift had THIS to say:
“Taylor does not hold anything against Kim Kardashian as she recognizes the pressure Kim must be under and that she is only repeating what she has been told by Kanye West.”
I AM LOL.
June 17, 2016
In a moment that will be taught in our grandchildren’s history classes, Kim calls Taylor a snake on Instagram:
Wait it's legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days! 🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) July 17, 2016
July 1, 2016
Kanye West releases the video for “Famous” which features Taylor Swift’s wax figure naked in bed with him.
July 18, 2016
Kim releases Snapchat receipts of Taylor seemingly giving Kanye permission to release “Famous.”
A post shared by KIM K x KYLIE (@kimkxkylie) on Jul 17, 2016 at 8:10pm PDT
In the convo, Taylor says, “If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘Look, he called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, joke’s on you guys, we’re fine.’”
That same day, Taylor releases her instantly iconic Notes App statement:
“Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that bitch’ in his song? It doesn’t exist because it never happened. You don’t get to control someone’s emotional response to being called ‘that bitch’ in front of the entire world. Of course I wanted to like the song. 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 a part of, since 2009.”
Lmao had to search through the notes to find this statement from February pic.twitter.com/iq3QpaoqSI
— John Dorn (@johnsdorn) July 18, 2016
August 27, 2017
After a year of hibernation, Taylor drops the video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” which is best described as a massive pile of Kimye shade.
May 9, 2018
Taylor kicks off her Reputation World Tour, reportedly telling the crowd, “A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media and it caught on. Then a lot of people were calling me a lot of things on social media. And I went through some really low times for a while because of it. I went through some times when I didn’t know if I was going to get to do this anymore.”
March 15, 2019
Taylor Likes a tweet calling Kanye’s “Famous” video “revenge porn.” The tweet in question says, “The famous music video was straight-up revenge porn. Not to mention putting abuse victims next to their abusers and celebrating sexual assaulters. It was disgusting and he doesn’t get enough crap for it.”
Here’s proof of her like:
August 24, 2019
Taylor releases her diary entry from the week Kanye interrupted her at the VMAs:
“Ahh…the things that can change in a week…” she wrote in a September 18, 2009 journal entry. “Let’s just say, if you had told me Kanye West would have been the number one focus of my week, the media, and my part in the VMAs I would’ve looked at you crossed eyed....And if you had told me that one of the biggest stars in music was going to jump up onstage 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.”
September 18, 2019
Taylor opens up to Rolling Stone about her feud with Kanye and legit eviscerates him, saying, “I realized he is so two-faced. That he wants to be nice to me behind the scenes, but then he wants to look cool, get up in front of everyone and talk shit.”
October 28, 2019
Selena posts a picture of herself in Kim Kardashian’s shapewear line Skims, the world freaks out, and then Selena straight-up deletes the pic and replaces it with one of Taylor.
#SelenaGomez deleted her Skims Shapewear post after she received unwarranted backlash from Selenators and Swifties. She put up a new post stating how much she loves @taylorswift13. pic.twitter.com/HTFhWOsqwD
— 🎀Tiffany🎀 [Not affiliated with any celebrity] (@selenesrat) October 28, 2019
November 1, 2019
Fans notice that Kim has Taylor Swift’s “Lover” playing in the background during a shoot, which has everyone understandably shook and confused:
Y’all hear LOVER playing in the background of Kim Kardashian’s story 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/Vb3yCLSKcI
— C (@SwiftieStan13) November 1, 2019
March 21, 2020
A new video leaks online of the call that Kanye made to Taylor to discuss “Famous,” which shows him excitedly telling her about the song and asking about the line “I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex” (the lyric was eventually tweaked). Taylor responds by making it clear she wants to think about it, and says, “I’m glad it’s not mean, I thought it was going to be like, ‘that stupid dumb bitch.’”
She's clearly uncomfortable af with him saying she owes him sex and tells him she will think about it and let him know if she's okay with it. And ALSO tells him that she wouldn't like if he'd called her a bitch.
And he never once mentions "i made that bitch famous" line to her pic.twitter.com/18QF3Mm4YG— 𝓛𝑜𝓋𝑒, 𝒜𝓃𝓊 (@redligion) March 21, 2020
A lot of fans consider this a game changer, but Kim Likes a tweet saying, “The video showed nothing new. We all knew that. I’m so confused right now.”
The video showed nothing new. We all knew that. I’m so confused right now pic.twitter.com/NO0b92Qvpo
— kim (@kimkwestlegion) March 21, 2020
March 22, 2020
Taylor makes her feelings on the full leak known with some strategic Tumblr Likes:
March 23, 2020
Hoo, boy. Lots was said on March 23, so let's just lay it all out there for easy reading. First, Taylor took to her Instagram Stories to beg her fans to ignore this feud and focus on what really matters: Coronavirus.
After she claimed someone manipulated the original video "to frame me and put me, my family, and fans through hell for 4 years," Kim piped up in a series of scathing tweets, calling Taylor a liar and implying she's playing the victim. Kimberly did not hold back, so here's just a sample of her tweets:
.@taylorswift13 has chosen to reignite an old exchange - that at this point in time feels very self-serving given the suffering millions of real victims are facing right now.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2020
I didn’t feel the need to comment a few days ago, and I’m actually really embarrassed and mortified to be doing it right now, but because she continues to speak on it, I feel I’m left without a choice but to respond because she is actually lying.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2020
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...” They clearly spoke so I let you all see that. Nobody ever denied the word “bitch” was used without her permission.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2020
At the time when they spoke the song had not been fully written yet, but as everyone can see in the video, she manipulated the truth of their actual conversation in her statement when her team said she
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2020
“declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.”
The lie was never about the word bitch, It was always whether there was a call or not and the tone of the conversation.— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2020
I never edited the footage (another lie) - I only posted a few clips on Snapchat to make my point and the full video that recently leaked doesn’t change the narrative.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2020
As you can see, Kim brought up Taylor's publicist, Tree Paine. After reading Kim's tweets, Tree really had no choice but to clap back and roast the Kardashians for seemingly pissing someone off so much that they leaked this video.
I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing.
P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video? 😂😂😂 https://t.co/AtMGUp3t24 pic.twitter.com/EjGDwAdL6O— Tree Paine (@treepaine) March 24, 2020
Annnnd that about brings us up to date. Something tells me this timeline will be updated, sigh.
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