Taylor Swift unpacked her years-long drama with Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, and Scooter Braun and the way it modified the trajectory of her profession in a brand new interview with TIME.
“I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many occasions within the final 20 years,” Swift, who was named TIME‘s Individual of the 12 months, mentioned. “I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away.”
One second particularly was a form of fulcrum: When West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech on the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, slicing her off onstage to insist that Beyoncé ought to have been the recipient of feminine video of the 12 months, not “You Belong With Me.” Swift, a minimum of at one level, had a framed picture of the second hanging in her home, and the domino impact over time is ongoing.
“I had all of the hyenas climb on and take their pictures,” she mentioned. She launched “Harmless,” a observe of forgiveness that was interpreted as finger-wagging West, after which got here the tabloid scandal over West’s “Well-known” and lyrics that referenced Swift. West’s then-wife Kardashian posted video purportedly of a cellphone name the place Swift gave permission for West to drop her title within the track. She referred to as the following circus “profession demise.”
“Make no mistake—my profession was taken away from me,” she mentioned.
“You might have a totally manufactured body job, in an illegally recorded cellphone name, which Kim Kardashian edited after which put out to say to everybody that I used to be a liar,” she mentioned. “That took me down psychologically to a spot I’ve by no means been earlier than. I moved to a overseas nation. I didn’t go away a rental home for a 12 months. I used to be afraid to get on cellphone calls. I pushed away most individuals in my life as a result of I didn’t belief anybody anymore. I went down actually, actually onerous.”
“I assumed that second of backlash was going to outline me negatively for the remainder of my life.”
In 2017, she launched Fame, which she now calls “a goth-punk second of feminine rage at being gaslit by a whole social construction.” In 2019, one other blow got here: Braun, who managed West and different stars, purchased Swift’s former label, Large Machine, and held the masters to Swift’s recordings.
“All I may take into consideration was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve obtained at his arms for years,” she wrote on Tumblr on the time. She signed off on the publish, “unhappy and grossed out.”
“With the Scooter factor, my masters had been being bought to somebody who actively wished them for nefarious causes, in my view,” Swift informed TIME. “I used to be so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was bought. I used to be like, ‘Oh, they acquired me beat now. That is it. I don’t know what to do.’”
