In a new interview with Time, which awarded her their Person of the Year, Taylor Swift discussed the psychological effects of her conflict with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and criticized the music industry for how it treats young pop artists.
Swift delivered a devastating critique of record labels’ short-termist strategy of replacing rather than developing their talents after a year in which she was the talk of the town due to her enormously successful Eras tour. “They throw you out at 29, usually, by the time you’re mature enough to deal with the job psychologically,” she adds. “It looks like the music industry decided to take a group of youngsters, toss them into a fire, and see what happens in the 1990s and 2000s. We’ll locate fresh youngsters by the time they’ve gained sufficient experience to carry out their duties efficiently. With every successive album project, she claimed to have changed her approach as a remedy, realizing that “every record label was actively working to try to replace me.” Rather than that, I decided to start again with a new version of myself. Hitting a moving target is more difficult.
She targeted Big Machine in particular, claiming that the label, which she released her first six albums on, was restricting her creative freedom. “Every artistic decision I wanted to make was questioned,” the woman claimed. “I was thinking too much about these records.”
The business relationship came to an abrupt end when Swift refused to give music manager Scooter Braun ownership of the Big Machine records because they had disagreements. She told Time, “I felt my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons.”
A lot of things were lost in translation in the trade and the circus around it, according to Braun, who has not commented on the interview. “I thought it was unfair, but I also understand, from the other side, they probably felt it was unfair, too,” he remarked at the time.
Swift has been hostile to Braun since the days when he was Kanye West’s manager. West dropped the line “I made that bitch famous” in his song “Famous,” which alludes to their earlier altercation. Swift was criticized after her then-wife Kim Kardashian released a phone conversation in which the two appeared to discuss Swift’s approval of the song, despite Swift’s stated opposition to the Famous line. An extended clip of the video showed Swift’s innocence by demonstrating that she didn’t approve of the “bitch” line.
Swift’s reputation suffered as a result of the dispute, which dominated social media and the tabloid press for years (as hinted at by the title of her sixth album). “My profession was snatched from me,” she states in the Time interview. “You have a completely faked frame job in an unlawfully recorded phone call that Kim Kardashian altered and then released to the public to claim that I was lying.” That knocked me down to a level I’ve never experienced psychologically. I relocated to another nation. It took me a year to move out of a rental home. I was terrified to answer the phone. I stopped trusting people, therefore I turned away the majority of the individuals in my life. I took a really, extremely bad fall.
Kardashian stated in 2020 that “nobody ever denied the word ‘bitch’ was used without her permission.” She has not responded. Swift “forced me to defend [West]”, the statement continued. “I never edited the footage (another lie) – I only posted a few clips on Snapchat to make my point.” In a 2016 interview, Kardashian added that Swift “totally gave the OK” for the line.
Swift proudly referred to 2017’s Reputation as “a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure.” Although some critics viewed the album poorly when it was first released, Swift fans have since embraced it.
In other sections of her Time interview, she talks about the ongoing attempt to re-record her Big Machine era albums, the much-discussed love life she had with NFL player Travis Kelce, and the similarities between her Eras and Beyoncé’s Renaissance tours, both of which resulted in well-liked concert videos. Pitting two women against one another is obviously incredibly profitable for the media and stan culture, she claims.
More generally, she expressed her satisfaction with the present surge in popularity of female pop stars, noting that female artists will dominate the 2024 Grammy nominations. “To put it in the most cynical perspective conceivable, the increasing profitability of feminine ideas will lead to an increase in the production of art by women. It’s really encouraging.