Taylor Swift Opened Up About The Emotional Aftermath Of The Kimye Drama
The Kim, Kanye, and Taylor drama is on newsstands... again. In a cover interview for Vogue's September issue, Taylor Swift opened up about a lot of things. Mostly the story behind what pushed her to open up about her political beliefs, but also the emotional aftermath of her public beef with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Taylor Swift's comments about getting "canceled" over the Kimye drama gives new insight about what navigating through that drama was like, and her life and career after.
Swift told the outlet that getting "canceled," unsurprisingly, is an isolating feeling.
“A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,” she said. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly." Scooter Braun might, now that Swift has called him out in a public Tumblr post accusing him of bullying her.
"When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show," Swift continued. "It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.”
Swift's not wrong that cancel culture is overwhelmingly negative. The internet reaction to the Kim and Kanye drama was dramatic, and Swift didn't deserve all of the #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled tweets. Although, objectively speaking, some might find her words a tad hypocritical. Namely, Justin Bieber. In his Instagram response to getting name-dropped in Swift's Tumblr post about Braun's acquisition of her masters, he wrote: "For you to take it to social media and get people to hate on scooter isn’t fair. What were you trying to accomplish by posting that blog? seems to me like it was to get sympathy u also knew that in posting that your fans would go and bully scooter."
Bieber makes a fair point. While Swift has every right to voice her grievances about the unfair nature of the music business and how her masters could somehow end up in the hands of someone other than her, considering her experience with cancel culture, did it not occur to her that putting Braun and Bieber on blast in such a public manner would lead to her fandom doing the same thing Kimye's did to her?
However you feel on that matter, her comments about what she did to heal and grow through the drama gives insight into how celebrities recoup after being "canceled."
“I realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control," she revealed. "I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating."
Enter Reputation. Although the album cover art for her ~rebellious~ phase was press-themed, Swift didn't do any interviews leading up to the release of Reputation.
“When you’re going through loss or embarrassment or shame, it’s a grieving process with so many micro emotions in a day," Swift told the outlet. "One of the reasons why I didn’t do interviews for Reputation was that I couldn’t figure out how I felt hour to hour."
She continued,
Sometimes I felt like: All these things taught me something that I never could have learned in a way that didn’t hurt as much. Five minutes later, I’d feel like: That was horrible. Why did that have to happen? What am I supposed to take from this other than mass amounts of humiliation? And then five minutes later I’d think: I think I might be happier than I’ve ever been.
The "ME!" singer went on to explain that while she's not grateful the Kimye drama happened, it landed her in a much happier place.
She said,
It’s so strange trying to be self-aware when you’ve been cast as this always smiling, always happy ‘America’s sweetheart’ thing, and then having that taken away and realizing that it’s actually a great thing that it was taken away, because that’s extremely limiting. We’re not going to go straight to gratitude with it. Ever. But we’re going to find positive aspects to it. We’re never going to write a thank-you note.
Swift has closed the door on that chapter now, telling Vogue that Lover "feels like a new beginning," and it might just be her favorite album she's ever made.
“There are so many ways in which this album feels like a new beginning,” she said of her first album created with Universal Music Group. “This album is really a love letter to love, in all of its maddening, passionate, exciting, enchanting, horrific, tragic, wonderful glory.”
Hopefully there's nothing explicitly about Kimye on the album. I'm much more interested in hearing about Swift's joy now than hearing another song about what Kim and Kanye "made" her do.
