Is Taylor Swift Really Still Beefing With Kim Kardashian?
24/04/2024 22:43
It's been eight years since Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian started publicly feuding, and it looks like at least one party is not ready to stop talking about it anytime soon. As fans decode every last word of Swift's new album, The Tortured Poets Department, people are convinced "thanK you aIMee" — a song about a girl who bullies Swift in high school — is about Kim.
To start, there's the fact that the letters K-I-M are capitalized in the song title — not exactly subtle. In the first verse, Swift sings, "When I picture my hometown / There's a bronze spray-tanned statue of you." You know who loves her spray tan? Kim Kardashian. Swift goes on to sing that Aimee "threatens to push me down the stairs, at our school." The song's chorus includes the lyrics "All that time you were throwin' punches, I was buildin' somethin' / And I can't forgive the way you made me feel / Screamed 'F—k you, Aimee' to the night sky, as the blood was gushin.'" She also sings the line: "Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman / But she used to say she wished that you were dead."
To recap, the beef started in 2016 after Kanye West rapped, "I made that bitch famous," referring to the time he interrupted Swift during her 2009 VMAs acceptance speech. After Swift took offense to the lyrics, Kardashian, who was married to West at the time, claimed Swift "totally approved" of the song before it was released. She eventually shared a video of a call where Swift and West discussed the song, though Swift maintained that she never approved the lyrics "that bitch." Since then, Swift has talked about the incident many times, including this past December,when she told Time that she felt it was "a career death" and that it scarred her psychologically. "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," she said. "I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life."
Swifties think another track, "Cassandra," may also chronicle Swift's enduring beef with Kimye. A figure in Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the power of prophecy but the curse of no one ever believing her, per the Brooklyn Museum. The song includes the line "The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line," which fans have interpreted as references to the Kardashian family's wealth and West's Sunday Service performances. Swift also sings, "So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say / Do you believe me now?," evoking the snakes that fueled Swift's reputation era.
Toward the end of "thanK you aIMee," Swift sings, "And one day, your kid comes home singin' / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you." According to TMZ, following the album release, Swifties swarmed the comments on Kim's social-media accounts, so it doesn't seem like they thought it was too hard to figure out whom the song was about.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Kardashian shared throwback photos of herself with Derek Blasberg for his birthday. One photo — a snap with Karlie Kloss — got people talking. Given that Swift and Kloss were formerly close friends, some interpreted the pic as a dig, while others saw it as Kardashian's way of suggesting that "thanK you aIMee" is actually about Kloss. Either way, Kardashian hasn't said anything directly about the song. During a Monday-night appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kardashian told Kimmel that "life is good." As for the drama, a source toldPeople that Kim is "over it and thinks Taylor should move on." Kardashian "doesn't get why [Swift] keeps harping on it," the source continued. "It's been literally years."
This post has been updated.
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