Taylor Swift says Kim and Kayne feud felt like a 'career death' and led to her fleeing the US

Taylor Swift has been extremely candid about her highly publicised feud with Kim Kardashian and Kayne West in an interview with TIME Magazine. The singer was given the prestigious title of TIME's 2023 Person of the Year', beating the likes of Barbie, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and King Charles III to the top.

In her first magazine interview in four years, Taylor discussed the highs and lows of her career as well as the infamous feud with Kim and Kayne that took the singer 'down psychologically to a place I’ve never been'. 

She told TIME: "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." Taylor then added: "I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life."

As a little bit of background; the drama between the music stars has been going on for over a decade, after Kanye interrupted Taylor's acceptance speech at the MTV VMAs in 2009. After some shade was thrown back and forth in various interviews, the pair seemed to bury the hatchet, with rumours even swirling of a potential collaboration between the pair - until Kayne dropped new track Famous in 2016. Its lyrics include the following: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous."

Cue much debate over whether Kayne asked Taylor for permission to release the song (which the singer strongly denied due to its misogynistic angle) and Kayne's then-wife Kim Kardashian jumping into the debate.

"She totally approved that," Kim told GQ. "She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn't. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved."

Kim went as far as to say she'd recorded a conversation between Kayne and Taylor, teasing followers that she was going to release it, insinuating that Taylor had been lying all along. Taylor discussed the impact this had on her back in 2019. 

"In my experience, I've come to see that bullies want to be feared and taken seriously," she told Elle Magazine. "A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the internet. The fact that so many people jumped on board with it led me to feeling lower than I've ever felt in my life."

In the present day, Taylor is reflective of the experience, saying that despite adversity, you need to 'keep making art.' She said: "I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art. But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time."

Well, there you have it.