"I didn't trust anyone anymore." Taylor Swift says Kim Kardashian 'destroyed her mentally' during the singer's conflict with Kanye West
Taylor Swift, who was recently recognized as “person of the year” According to Time, in an interview she criticized Kim Kardashian for “destroying her psychologically.” and forced her into hiding during a long-standing public conflict with her husband Kanye West.
In 2016, Kanye West wrote the song Famous, which contained vulgar lines about Swift: he sang that he could still sleep with Taylor, because he was the one who made her popular, making reference to their previous conflicts. After this, his wife Kim Kardashian published a conversation with Taylor Swift on social networks, from which it followed that the singer herself agreed to mention West in the song. According to Swift, Kim intentionally edited the conversation.
“She had a completely fabricated piece of an illegally recorded phone call that she edited and released to tell everyone that I lied,” Taylor said.
"It destroyed me psychologically and forced me to move to a new place. I left for another country and didn’t leave my rented house for a whole year. I was afraid to answer the phone." Indeed, at that time, Taylor Swift had practically disappeared from the public eye. There were also rumors that she rented a house in London to spend more time with actor Joe Alwyn, whom she then began dating.
According to Taylor, she took it very hard. "I pushed away most of the people in my life because I didn't trust anyone anymore. It was a very, very hard blow." She added that it was like she would never be able to resuscitate her career. "Make no mistake, my career was taken away from me. I thought this negative reaction would affect the rest of my life."
However, the singer said that she had drawn conclusions from this story. “One thing I've learned is that my reaction to everything that happens, good or bad, is to keep creating something. Keep making art. And the garbage gets thrown out on its own every time.”
At the time, the singer released a song called Look What You Made Me Do from her album Reputation, which hinted at this story, and the video begins with an image of a tombstone with the words "Taylor Swift's Career." The song was considered a response to Kanye West.
The conflict between Taylor Swift and Kanye West began in 2009 at the MTV Video Music Awards, where Taylor received the award for “Best Music Video.” When Taylor was making her speech, Kanye West came on stage, took the microphone from the singer and declared that Beyoncé should have won the nomination. Taylor Swift looked discouraged and upset and didn't finish her speech after that. For this outburst, Kanye faced severe backlash from many of his colleagues.
Kanye soon issued a public apology to Taylor. And later, according to the singer, he called her and asked her to present him with the Vanguard Award at the 2015 Video Music Awards, in which he was previously declared the winner, saying that it was important to him. Taylor Swift agreed and wrote a speech, but at the event itself, Kanye said from the stage that MTV instructed Taylor to present him with the award for the sake of ratings. Swift recalled that she was then standing in an embrace with his wife, and “a chill ran down her spine.”
In 2018, Kanye West stated that because of these conflicts with Taylor Swift, he lost many contracts, in addition, allegedly because of her, his psychological problems worsened. It is worth noting that since then, things have been much worse for Kanye West than for Taylor. He scandalously divorced Kim Kardashian, publicly discussing her new novels, lost contracts due to anti-Semitic statements, and this summer faced a wave of negativity due to joint provocative acts with his new wife Bianca Censori.