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Taylor Swift has reflected on the fallout from Kim Kardashian’s 2016 publication of the singer’s infamous phone conversation with Kanye West.
The 33-year-old recently spoke candidly about the leaked phone calls — which appear to be a discussion of West’s controversial issues — in a recent interview with Time published on December 6, after she was named the publication’s 2023 Person of the Year Song “Famous” was about .
In 2016, Kardashian posted snippets of a conversation between her then-husband and Swift in which the pop star appeared to approve of West’s lyrics about her in his song. In the song, West sang, “I feel like Taylor and I could still have sex / I made this guy famous.” After the song’s release, a rep for Swift denied reports that she ever agreed with the lyrics. When an unedited version of the conversation was released in 2020, at no point in the clip did West mention that he would call Swift a “b****” in the song or claim that he “made her famous.”
Speaking to Time, Swift said that when Kardashian posted the call, which made it seem like the “Cruel Summer” singer had approved of the lyrics, it felt like it was “a career death.” She said: “Make no mistake – my career has been taken away from me.”
She further explained how the call had affected her reputation, claiming: “Kim Kardashian edited [it] and then put [it] I wanted to tell everyone I was a liar.”
Swift recalled how the phone call leak in 2016 affected her mental health, before revealing that she even moved to a new home to hide from the attention. She also described how the incident had affected her relationships with those around her.
“It took me to a place mentally that I had never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rented house for a year,” she said. “I was afraid to answer the phone. I pushed away most of the people in my life because I no longer trusted anyone. I went down really, really hard.”
In March 2020, when the full phone conversation between Swift and West leaked online, the “All Too Well” singer first appeared to accuse the rapper and his then-wife of “editing and manipulating” portions of the phone conversation in 2016.
While introducing a post about donating to charities on her Instagram Stories, she wrote: “Instead of answering those who ask me what I think about the leaked video footage to prove that I was saying *this call* all along (you know, the one that was taken illegally, that someone edited and manipulated to frame me and put me, my family, and my fans through four years of hell)… Swipe up to see what really matters.”
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Kardashian later responded on Twitter: Write: “@taylorswift13 has decided to revive an old exchange – which at this point feels very self-serving given the suffering millions of real victims are currently facing.”
She claimed: “A few days ago I didn’t feel the need to comment and I’m actually really embarrassed and ashamed to do so now but because she continues to talk about it I feel like I’ve been let down “I’m going to have a choice other than answering because she’s actually lying.”
Kardashian claimed she “never edited the footage” of the 2016 call and then explained why she defended her then-husband.
“Kanye documented the creation of all of his albums for his personal archive, but never released any of it for public consumption, and the phone call between the two would have remained private or ended up in the trash if she hadn’t lied. “I forced myself to to defend,” she tweeted at the time.
While Swift has since put her feud with West behind her, she appeared to make subtle references to the rapper on various occasions. As she was about to begin her performance of “Champagne Problems” during one of her Eras Tour shows in Mexico City in August, she was interrupted by fans shouting her name. In response, she expressed how grateful she was for this kind of interruption, unlike others, seemingly alluding to the time when West ran onstage during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and took the microphone away from her during she gave her acceptance speech for the award for Best Video by a Female Artist.
“By the way, the best way to get interrupted is for people to just shout your name. It’s really the only way to be interrupted… and I would know it,” she told the audience at her concert in August.
The Independent has contacted representatives for West and Kardashian for comment.