Could Taylor Swift be referencing her feud with Kim Kardashian on her new album The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology?
Swift, 34, surprised fans in the early hours of April 19 after announcing her latest body of work was actually a double album including 15 extra songs. Among them were the tracks “Cassandra” and “thanK you aIMee,” the latter of which notably has the letters K, I, and M capped up in the song’s title.
“thanK you aIMee,” portrays “Aimee” as a school bully figure, with lyrics of the song’s chorus referencing her attacks on Swift.
“All that time you were throwin’ punches, I was buildin’ somethin’ / And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel / Screamed ‘F— you, Aimee’ to the night sky, as the blood was gushin’/“But I can’t forget the way you made me heal.”
In 2016, Kardashian’s then-husband Kanye West included the lyrics “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous,” in his song “Famous” which he claimed the “Blank Space” singer had approved. Shortly after, Swift, through her representative, denied that she had been made aware of the lyrics, “I made that bitch famous.”
Amid the furor, Kardashian, 43, released edited footage to her Snapchat of an alleged phone call between West and Swift discussing the song — a call that Swift had no idea was being recorded, multiple sources told PEOPLE at the time.
In the bridge for “thanK you aIMee,” Swift suggests that “Aimee” may have “reframed” the damage she caused and hints that she has disguised her true identity in the song.
“And maybe you’ve reframed it/And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue/I don’t think you’ve changed much/And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues,” she sings.
Following the song’s release, fans on social media were quick to share their thoughts on who, and what, the song is about, with many directly pointing fingers at Kardashian.
“Taylor swift just made a diss track about kim kardashian in 2024 #TSTTPD,” one fan wrote on X shortly after the double album’s release.
“Not #thanKyouaIMee being an entire song by Taylor Swift thanking Kim Kardashian because there ‘wouldn’t be this if there hadn’t been you,’ ” another fan wrote, in part, on X (formerly Twitter) on April 19.
In the X post, the fan also speculated that a part of the song in which Swift references her mother, Andrea Swift, and reveals her mom’s thoughts about “Aimee,” is also about Kardashian.
“Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman/But she used to say she wished that you were dead,” Taylor sings in the track.
“thanK you aIMee” isn’t the only Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology song that appears to have links to Kardashian, with “Cassandra” seeming to reference the Greek goddess of the same name. According to the Brooklyn Museum’s website, “The god Apollo, enamored of [Cassandra], granted her the power of prophecy but, when she rejected him, sabotaged that power with a curse that no one would believe her predictions.”
“So, they killed Cassandra first ’cause she feared the worst/And tried to tell the town/So, they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say/Do you believe me now?” Taylor sings in the new track, also appearing to reference the snake emoji that featured in her feud with the reality TV star.
Kardashian famously posted snake emojis amid the controversy surrounding her then-husband and Taylor after claiming that the singer had lied about approving the song. At the time, trolls on social media then flooded Taylor’s social media accounts with snake imagery.
The pop superstar previously spoke about her feud with Kardashian in her cover interview with TIME after being named the outlet’s 2023 Person of the Year in December.
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She explained that the moment and the public’s reaction felt like “a career death” and “took [her] down psychologically to a place [she’d] never been before.” .
“Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me,” the “Cruel Summer” singer 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 recalled.
Source People.com
