Throughout the barrage of announcements yesterday salivating over the hot gossip off the press that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West would be filing for divorce (fucking finally), one could only imagine the creeping–but modest and just well-hidden enough–smirk of Taylor Swift. Sure, she once might have famously (yes, that’s a Kanye allusion) declared back in 2016, “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I never asked to be a part of, since 2009,” but that doesn’t mean she’s immune to the karmic retribution of that narrative now. For fuck’s sake, she created an entire album concept around the sweet day when revenge would be hers, and all without even having to lift a finger. Fate would take care of everything, she seemed to inuit.
That much was made clear in the video for Reputation’s lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” released in 2017… after about a year of being slung through the mud in the press in the wake of Kim releasing some very specific Snapchat videos aiming to show that Taylor was aware Kanye would be name checking her in a track from The Life of Pablo. What she was never made aware of (as it was later revealed) was being called “that bitch.” Or how Kanye would further belittle her accomplishments as he did on that VMAs stage by attempting to claim direct responsibility for her fame. It didn’t take Tay Tay long to fight back both Kim and Kanye’s treachery the only way she knew how: with her venomous songwriting. Speaking of venom, of course snake imagery is used throughout the video (and the promotion for the album, as well as Taylor Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour). This being Taylor’s way of taking ownership of the snake that Kim used to accuse her of being via the emoji icon (Kim just loves her emojis, hence: Kimoji). So, in a way, Taylor can thank Kim for pushing her to the next level of rage on the distinctly “dark” (for a pop record) album. At the same time, that would be like Kanye taking credit for Tay’s success as well.
The “Look What You Made Me Do” video immediately commenced with the implication of Taylor digging her own grave (thanks to her literally doing this) by trusting the fugly slut that is Kimye (a two-headed Hydra and single entity formed solely to destroy Taylor, obvi). Taylor establishes that this is the stuff of pop culture legend. The modern equivalent of a Shakespearean tragedy, where the only character who wins is the one telling the story. Swift, in the end, got to be the victor on that front, reclaiming the “narrative” as her own. Directed by Joseph Kahn (known for the pop music video acumen that would also generate other Swift videos including, “Blank Space,” “Bad Blood,” “Wildest Dreams,” “Out of the Woods,” “…Ready For It?,” “End Game” and “Delicate”), everything about the storyline retrospectively feels like the establishment of Taylor’s awareness that she would only need to wait just a little while to claim the complete vindication that has always belonged to her. However, during the height of the wound’s freshness–the intense emotional scarring–Swift was led to come up with the self-flagellating lyric, “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me/I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams.”
It’s the ending of the video, as a series of Taylor incarnations past stand in front of a plane and start yelling at each other for their respective “fake” personas, that one truly does get a sense of just how much Kanye has colored her sense of self-worth for a large bulk of her career. It arguably wasn’t even until 2020 that Swift finally dispensed with the past drama starring her, Kanye and, de facto, Kim. In an interview from Variety in early 2020, Swift remarked of the incident that started it all in ‘09, “As a teenager who had only been in country music, attending my very first pop awards show, somebody stood up and sent me the message: ‘You are not respected here. You shouldn’t be here on this stage.’ That message was received, and it burrowed into my psyche more than anyone knew… But then when that person who sparked all of those feelings comes back into your life, as he did in 2015, and I felt like I finally got that respect, but then soon realized that for him it was about him creating some revisionist history where he was right all along, and it was correct, right and decent for him to get up and do that to a teenage girl.”
Oddly, there was a time when Taylor still felt obliged to try to be a friend to West. Maybe it had something to do with the psychology of wanting to please those you know will never really like you for you. The now illustrious call between Swift and West that took place before the recording of “Famous” found West commenting, “I feel like with my wife, that she probably didn’t like the ‘might still have sex’ because it would be like, what if she was on a TV show and said ‘Me and Tom Brady might still have sex’ or something?” Swift replied of the concern, “You have to protect your relationship. Do what’s best. You just had a kid. You’re in the best place of your life. I wouldn’t ever advise you to fuck with that.” She genuinely cared about West, and his doomed relationship with Kim. All while standing up against the original “Taylor might still owe me sex” line that Kim preferred, because, well, language is everything, and this made it particularly misogynistic.
After politely explaining to him why it would be insanity for her to be the one to release the song on her Twitter account, Swift added in the call, “I kind of feel like people would try to make it negative if it came from me, do you know what I mean? I think I’m very self-aware about where I am, and I feel like right now I’m like this close to overexposure.” How prophetic of Swift indeed, for it would be soon after that Kim helped nudge her completely into that glaring spotlight of overexposure. And Swift, unlike Madonna, didn’t have the good sense to respond to the unspoken question, “Do you ever feel overexposed?” with the answer, “Only at the gynecologist’s.” But being that Swift is more known for “carefully curating” everything (as if Madonna doesn’t do the same), it was a “salacious tidbit” to audiences that this was one thing she could not control. And oh how everyone seemed to get off on that as Kim released very select audio snippets of the conversation during which she seemingly gave her approval and blessing for Kanye to record the song.
So began the death of the “Old Taylor”–the angelic one who could put on the “airs” of being “innocent.” Albeit, according to everyone else, a calculated form of innocent. What better way to immortalize that than in visual and sonic form with “Look What You Made Me Do”–a video where she rises from a graveyard with all of its stones shaped in a giant “TS” form from an aerial perspective (one imagines she really will have a private cemetery like that one day when she has her progeny with Joe Alwyn). She is a phoenix-zombie, turning her grave into a diamond-filled bathtub as she lies in wait inside of her snake-plagued mansion for the day she knows must come eventually: glorious karmic justice.
And it really has, in a twofold fashion at this juncture. When the full conversation was finally leaked in 2020 at one of the early peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kim was still self-involved to prattle on about how she was now the one being “framed,” in a series of tweets nitpicking at word choices that might be able to make her look like less of a cunt for going after Taylor so duplicitously. Ironically, her bid to spare her husband’s reputation (in this instance and many others) has only cost her her own. In the meantime, Swift kept it classy with an Instagram story that read, “Instead of me answering those who are asking how I feel about the video footage that was 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 4 years)… swipe up to see what really matters.” At which time they were directed to donate to the Feeding America food bank and the World Health Organization. Kim, in contrast, for the majority of the pandemic, has made it clear that she’s been possessed by the spirit of Marie Antoinette. Fortunately, she lives in a time where she can divorce her Louis XVI (which is clearly how Kanye sees himself).
And anyway, regardless of Swift’s more graceful handling of events overall and particularly during a period of pronounced global strife, how the hell are you gonna try and come at Taylor Swift, the ultimate receipt keeper via her songwriting journal, with any receipts that will be deemed “as viable”? You’re not. That’s why, more than anyone, the Kimye divorce is just as much about her triumph as it is about their failure. They are a triad linked by the bonds of enmeshed trauma now. And after all this, you have to wonder if Kanye is still delusional enough to think that the only way to finally settle all this tension between him and Taylor is by banging.
More conspiracy theory-oriented still: was this entire charade with Kim a left-field attempt on Kanye’s part to get closer to the girl he wronged on that stage in ‘09? Why else would he suddenly make a big production about wanting to help her “get her masters back” (as though that’s even in the wheelhouse of his power) at the same time as railing against his own wife? Again, it’s the stuff of Shakespeare, except now Kanye seems to be setting himself up for an unrequited love storyline. Because the only thing Taylor can love about Ye right now is the expression on his face when she sends him some home-baked cookies with the words, “West/Swift 2024” on them. She loves a good prank on a gullible megalomaniac.
