Taylor Swift’s Feud With Kim Kardashian & Kanye West Hurt Her More Than We Knew

Those lyrics make a lot of sense when you consider that, as Taylor Swift explained to Rolling Stone in 2019, while she and Ye certainly had their ups and downs, she thought things were sorted between them especially after the rapper asked her to present him with an award at the 2015 VMAs and then sent her flowers the next day. Swift even saw their now infamous phone call as a sign of good faith so she was completely blindsided by the offensive “Famous” lyric.

A fuller version of the conversation was leaked in March 2020, which confirmed once and for all that Swift didn’t approve it. Moreover, Ye started the call by asking if Swift would share the song on her Twitter account when it was released. But that wasn’t how Kardashian saw it. In March 2020, the reality star tweeted nine times about the situation, including claiming, “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.”

With the release of Swift’s 2023 “Person of the Year” article, people began posting snake emojis to Kardashian’s account and demanding that she apologize (the SKIMS founder previously said that she wouldn’t talk about the incident again). As Swift put it in her TIME interview, “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.”