Taylor Swift, the American musician, claims her conflict with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian in 2016 “took me down psychologically.”
In an interview with TIME, the Grammy winner, who was recently selected as TIME’s ‘Person of the Year 2023,’ discussed some of her career’s key events.
In 2016, West put out a track titled ‘Famous’ wherein he rapped, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that b—h famous”.
This was after West famously stole Swift’s microphone at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. West had stopped Swift’s victory speech onstage, saying that Beyoncé, not Swift, should have won the ‘female video of the year’ prize.
Swift reacted angrily to the ‘Famous’ lyrics. She was chastised, however, after Kim, West’s then-wife, leaked a phone call audio between the couple in which the diva appeared to accept the song.
Swift was also vindicated in a longer version of the video, which revealed she did not approve of the “bitch” remark.
Swift stated in the interview that her feud with the former couple “damaged” her reputation.
Swift said that Kim “illegally” taped and manipulated their discussion in order to portray her as a liar.
She stated that the experience affected her “psychologically” and that she avoided people because she “could not trust anymore.”
“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.
“That took me down psychologically to a place I have never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I did not 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 did not trust anyone any more. I went down really, really hard.”
Kim and West are yet to respond to Swift — as of the time of this report.