Taylor Swift Called Out Kim Kardashian And Kanye West For "Taking Away" Her Career After That 2016 Phone Call

It's no secret that Taylor Swift doesn't get along with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, especially after that infamous 2016 phone call leak.

Lemme give you a quick refresher: Back in 2016, Kanye West released a song called "Famous" where he sings the lyrics, "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous." Months later, the music video came out depicting a nude Taylor Swift wax figure in bed next to Kanye, along with several other famous figures.

Kanye's lyric is a direct reference to the 2009 VMAs when Taylor won the award for Best Video by a Female Artist, went up onstage to accept the award, and Kanye rushed to the stage, stole the microphone, and said, "I'ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” The moment has gone down in history as one of the most chaotic and, frankly, disrespectful moments in VMA history. 

Also, Taylor had already won several awards at this point in her career, so Kanye wasn't exactly the one who made her famous. 

At the time, Kanye claimed that he got permission from Taylor about these lyrics in an hour-long phone call. A few days later, a source confirmed that while yes, they did talk on the phone, Kanye never got permission to call Taylor a "bitch" in his song. He'd reportedly only asked her to share the song on Twitter.

Kim Kardashian, Kanye's then-wife, told GQ that Taylor was lying and she "totally knew" it was coming out. Then, a rep for Taylor spoke out saying that Taylor had never denied that she and Kanye spoke, and said, "Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account, which she declined to do."

Kim then released video footage of the call, which was edited to make it seem like Taylor was approving the lyrics. Fans sided with Kim and Kanye and #KimExposedTaylorParty began trending and people commented 🐍 on Taylor's social media pages. Taylor then went into "hiding" because of the constant bullying from Kanye's fans and released her album Reputation a year later, which makes several references to the entire situation.

Then, in 2020, the entire unedited version of Taylor and Kanye's phone call was leaked, revealing that Taylor had been right the entire time. She never gave Kanye permission to include that lyric about her, and someone had edited the footage Kim had released years prior. 

Okay, now flash forward to today: Taylor was named Time's Person of the Year and spoke candidly about that whole debacle, among other moments throughout her career, in her interview.

"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."

She continued to explain that experience was actually extremely damaging to her mental health and said, "That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t 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 didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard."

“I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she continued, recalling how Reputation was met with skepticism at first.

And luckily, her fears didn't come true because now in 2023, she's in the absolute PEAK of her career.

Read Taylor's full interview here.