So Much DramaTaylor Swift’s Longtime Feud With Kim Kardashian and Kanye West: Complete Timeline

The Beginning

Kanye kicked off the longtime issues between him and Taylor at the 2009 VMAs. Taylor opened up about the incident in a diary entry, which was published alongside her 2019 album Lover.

“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.”

The Award

Taylor presented Kanye with the Vanguard Award at the 2015 VMAs.

“He called me up beforehand — I didn’t illegally record it, so I can’t play it for you. But he called me up, maybe a week or so before the event, and we had maybe over an hourlong conversation, and he’s like, ‘I really, really would like for you to present this Vanguard Award to me, this would mean so much to me,’ and went into all the reasons why it means so much, because he can be so sweet,” Taylor recalled about this moment in a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone. “He can be the sweetest. And I was so stoked that he asked me that. And so I wrote this speech up, and then we get to the VMAs and I make this speech and he screams, ‘MTV got Taylor Swift up here to present me this award for ratings!’ And I’m standing in the audience with my arm around his wife, and this chill ran through my body. 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 s–t. And I was so upset. He wanted me to come talk to him after the event in his dressing room. I wouldn’t go. So then he sent this big, big thing of flowers the next day to apologize. And I was like, ‘You know what? I really don’t want us to be on bad terms again. So whatever, I’m just going to move past this.’”

The Song

After things seemed to die down between Taylor and Kanye, he released “Famous” in 2016, which included a line about Taylor. After receiving backlash, he said that she approved the lyrics.

“I called Taylor and had an hour-long convo with her about the line, and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.

Following his social media post, a spokesperson for Taylor told People, “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’”

Kim’s Involvement

“She totally approved that,” Kim said in her 2016 GQ interview. “She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn’t. I don’t know why she just, you know, flipped all of a sudden. It was funny because [on the call with Kanye] she 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.”

Taylor’s 2nd Statement

“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. However, that does not change the fact that much of what Kim is saying is incorrect. Kanye West and Taylor only spoke once on the phone while she was on vacation with her family in January of 2016, and they have never spoken since. Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account, which she declined to do,” her spokesperson said, per Billboard. “Kanye West never told Taylor he was going to use the term ‘that bitch’ in referencing her. A song cannot be approved if it was never heard. Kanye West never played the song for Taylor Swift. Taylor heard it for the first time when everyone else did and was humiliated. Kim Kardashian’s claim that Taylor and her team were aware of being recorded is not true, and Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.”

The ‘Famous’ Phone Call

Kim released a video to her Snapchat Story of the alleged phone call between Taylor and Kanye where they discussed the song.

“It’s like a compliment,” Taylor could be heard saying in the clip, seemingly referring to the line in the song. “I never would’ve expected you to, like, tell me about a line in your song. I mean, I don’t think anybody would listen to that and be like, ‘Oh, that’s a real diss.’ You gotta tell the story that way that it happened to you and the way you experienced it.”

She went on to add, “If people ask me about it, look, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘He called me and told me before it came out — Joke’s on you, guys. We’re fine.’”

Taylor’s Reply

“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,” she wrote in a since-deleted post on Instagram. “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.”

Addressing the Drama

“A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are ‘canceled,’ is a very isolating experience,” Taylor said in her Vogue cover from August 2019. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly. When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, ‘Kill yourself.’”

Talking About the Phone Call

Taylor also spoke out about the infamous phone call during an interview with Rolling Stone in September 2019.

“The world didn’t understand the context and the events that led up to it. Because nothing ever just happens like that without some lead-up,” she said. “Some events took place to cause me to be pissed off when he called me a bitch. That was not just a singular event. Basically, I got really sick of the dynamic between he and I. And that wasn’t just based on what happened on that phone call and with that song — it was kind of a chain reaction of things.”

She continued, “I started to feel like we reconnected, which felt great for me — because all I ever wanted my whole career after that thing happened in 2009 was for him to respect me. When someone doesn’t respect you so loudly and says you literally don’t deserve to be here — I just so badly wanted that respect from him, and I hate that about myself, that I was like, ‘This guy who’s antagonizing me, I just want his approval.’ But that’s where I was. And so we’d go to dinner and stuff. And I was so happy, because he would say really nice things about my music. It just felt like I was healing some childhood rejection or something from when I was 19. … I was like, ‘OK, good. We’re back on good terms.’ And then when I heard the song, I was like, ‘I’m done with this. If you want to be on bad terms, let’s be on bad terms, but just be real about it.”

The Full Call’s Leak

In March 2020, the entire video of Taylor and Kanye’s phone conversation about “Famous” leaked online. Taylor took to her Instagram Stories to address the situation, and she used the opportunity to raise money for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“Instead of answering those who are asking how I feel about the video footage that leaked, proving that I was telling the truth the whole time about *that call* (you know, the one that was illegally recorded, that somebody edited and manipulated in order to frame me and put me, my family and fans through hell for four years) … Swipe up to see what really matters,” she wrote, alongside a link to Feeding America. “The World Health Organization and Feeding America are some of the organizations I’ve been donating to. If you have the ability to, please join me in donating during this crisis.”

Kim Hits Back Again

Kim then posted a message of her own.

“@taylorswift 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. 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,” she shared via Instagram Stories, in part. “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. 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 ‘declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.’”

Kim continued, “Kanye as an artist has every right to document his musical journey and process, just like she recently did through her documentary. Kanye has documented the making of all of his albums for his personal archive, however has never released any of it for public consumption and the call between the two of them would have remained private or would have gone in the trash had she not lied and forced me to defend him. This will be the last time I speak on this because honestly, nobody cares. Sorry to bore you all with this. I know you are all dealing with more serious and important matters.”

Taylor’s Publicist Hits Back

Taylor’s publicist, Tree Paine, then responded via Twitter, where she shared a screenshot of her original statement, which read, “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’”

“I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. [By the way], when you take parts out, that’s editing,” she captioned it. “P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”

Kanye’s Tweets

Kanye addressed Taylor’s feud with Scooter in a September 2020 Twitter post.

Taylor’s Album

Fans were convinced that Taylor threw shade at Kanye after announcing her 10th album during the MTV VMAs — on the 13th anniversary of when the rapper interrupted her speech during the same ceremony. Others speculated that her album release date, October 21, 2022 — which is Kim’s birthday — is also furthering the feud. However, none of the stars have spoken of the rumors.

Taylor Jokes About the 2009 VMAs

When taking the stage during her Eras Tour in August 2023, Taylor subtly addressed the longtime feud.

“People chanting your name, it’s really the only way to be interrupted,” she joked while on stage. “And I would know.”

Taylor’s Interview With ‘TIME’ Magazine

Taylor gave fans insight into what life was like after her infamous phone call incident with Kanye during her interview for TIME2023 Person of the Year. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. 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. I went down really, really hard.”

She further claimed that Kim had doctored their phone call. “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,” Taylor alleged.

‘thanK you aIMee’

In April 2024, Taylor released the track “thanK you aIMee” off her album The Tortured Poets Department, which capitalizes letters that spell out “KIM.”

“All that time you were throwin’ punches, I was buildin’ somethin’,” she sings in the chorus. “And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel, screamed ‘Fuck you, Aimee’ to the night sky, as the blood was gushin’. But I can’t forget the way you made me heal.”