If the release of The Tortured Poets Department wasn’t already exciting enough, Taylor Swift has surprised fans by unveiling an extra 15 songs on the long-awaited project!
And believe it or not, one of these new songs seemingly sheds light on Taylor’s age-old feud with Kim Kardashian.
To quickly summarize the context of their feud: Taylor and Kim clashed back in 2016, when Kim’s then-husband, Kanye West, released his song “Famous,” which included the lyric: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”
Then, of course, Kim infamously released footage of Taylor and Ye’s phone call, which appeared to show Taylor approving the line. “Yeah. I mean, go with whatever line you think is better. It’s obviously very tongue-in-cheek either way. And I really appreciate you telling me about it, that’s really nice!” she could be heard saying.
Hours before releasing the Snapchat video of the phone call, Kim tweeted, “Wait it's legit National Snake Day?!?!? They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!” alongside a ton of snake emojis.
Taylor still maintained that she was not made aware of Ye’s “that bitch” line. However, the internet abruptly turned on her; her social media pages were flooded with snake emojis, while #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trended on X, formerly known as Twitter.
As a result of the immense backlash, Taylor virtually disappeared from the public eye for a year, before reclaiming the whole “snake” brand with her 2017 album Reputation.
In 2020, Taylor and Ye’s full phone call was shared online, revealing that Taylor had never actually approved of the “that bitch” lyric after all.
Taylor has also addressed the feud directly, telling Time magazine last year that Kim and Ye’s “fully manufactured frame job” resulted in her career being temporarily “taken away” from her.
“Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me,” she said. “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.
“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 continued before adding: “I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life.”
Now, Taylor has seemingly referenced the drama with Kim once again in her new release, The Tortured Poets Department.
It should be mentioned that lyrical interpretation is, of course, entirely subjective — although Taylor does famously leave hints to encourage her fans to work out who inspires her tracks. That being said, several fans have now theorized that Taylor’s new song “thanK you aIMee” is about the Skims mogul — not least because the capitalized letters obviously spell out KIM.
In “thanK you aIMee,” Taylor appears to paint Kim as a high-school bully, seemingly nodding toward how she has felt bullied by both Kim and Ye throughout her career.
“When I picture my hometown / There's a bronze spray-tanned statue of you / And a plaque underneath it / That threatens to push me down the stairs, at our school,” it begins. Many fans have speculated that the reference to a “bronze spray-tanned statue” is a shady jab at Kim and her infamous love of self-tanning.
“Screamed ‘Fuck you, Aimee’ to the night sky, as the blood was gushin' / But I can't forget the way you made me heal,” Taylor sings. Notably, Taylor’s management team tweeted this lyric alongside a GIF from her Reputation era, fueling speculation that it is aimed at Kim.
“And it wasn't a fair fight, or a clean kill / Each time that Aimee stomped across my grave / And then she wrote headlines / In the local paper, laughing at each baby step I'd take,” she sings. Once again, Taylor appears to be referencing Kim’s public attempts to vilify her at the height of their feud.
Taylor continues, “I wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool / I built a legacy which you can't undo / But when I count the scars, there's a moment of truth / That there wouldn't be this, if there hadn't been you.” Here, Taylor appears to acknowledge that as distressing as it was, there would be no Reputation without the infamous phone call leak and all the vitriol that followed.
She goes on, “And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues / And one day, your kid comes home singin' / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” This line appears to reference Kim’s eldest daughter, North West, having posted a TikTok video of her and Kim dancing to Taylor’s hit song “Shake It Off” last year — something that sparked widespread attention at the time.
Taylor later switches her tone, instead thanking "Aimee" instead of cursing her. She sings, "All that time you were throwin' punches, it was all for nothin' / And our town, it looks so small, from way up here / Screamed 'Thank you, Aimee' to the night sky, and the stars are stunnin' / 'Cause I can't forget the way you made me heal."
