Taylor Swift appears to have reignited he long-standing feud with Kim Kardashian on her new album The Tortured Poets Department, but the reality star wishes she would have let it be.
The 34-year-old singer–songwriter’s fans speculated that she was gong after the 43-year-old reality TV icon when a second volume of her album was dropped just two hours after the first disc was released.
It featured a song titled Thank You Aimee — stylized as ‘thanK you aIMee,’ spelling out Kim in capital letter — which fans took to refer to Kardashian due to their previous feuding.
But a source told People on Tuesday that Kim had put the bad blood behind her — and she hopes that Taylor can learn to do the same.
‘She’s over it and thinks Taylor should move on,’ the source said, adding that Kim ‘doesn’t get why [Swift] keeps harping on it.’
Kim Kardashian, 43, is hoping Taylor Swift can move on from their years-long feud after fans think she reignited it with her new song Thank You Aimee, according to People; seen in November in NYC
‘She’s over it and thinks Taylor should move on,’ the source said, adding that Kim ‘doesn’t get why [Swift] keeps harping on it’; Taylor seen in February in Sydney, Australia
‘It’s been literally years,’ they emphasized.
However, their disagreements are allegedly still on Taylor’s mind, and certainly on the mind’s of the hitmakers fans.
After Kim appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday, Swift’s more overzealous fans took to social media to complain that the host hadn’t asked her about Thank You Aimee or their years-old feud.
‘Why not ask her about the Taylor Swift song that North will be singing!’ wrote one person on Instagram.
Another wrote: ‘Jimmy, I’m 100 percent sure you weren’t allowed to speak or ask questions about Taylor or TTPD but you could have least “slipped up” a couple of times and called her aIMee.’
One fan called the interview ‘cringe,’ presumably because Kim wasn’t asked about Taylor, though she did clear up other rumors about herself while chatting with the host.
In addition to the unsubtle title, fans believe Thank You Aimee is aimed at Kim thanks to its chorus: ‘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.’
Elsewhere in the lyrics, Taylor sings about removing ‘defining clues’ about the person she’s singing about, and she added, ‘I changed your name,’ which instantly drew more listeners to the irregularly capitalized title.
The ongoing feud between Taylor and Kim appears to trace back to the 2016 release of Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo.
In that album’s song Famous, Kim’s ex-husband raps: ‘I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that b**** famous.’
‘It’s been literally years,’ the source emphasized. The feud goes back to 2016, when Kim’s ex Kanye West called Taylor a ‘b****’ and mused about the two having sex in his song Famous, from The Life Of Pablo; seen in 2016
Taylor denied giving permission for the line. Kim later leaked a version of the call in which she appeared to give permission, but a full version showed that the ‘b***’ line was never mentioned to Taylor; seen in 2015 in LA
The line, which alludes to when the 46-year-old rapper interrupted Taylor’s win at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, was supposedly passed on to the songstress for approval, but she denies ever giving it the OK.
Taylor said she had been contact about the song, but she was ‘never made aware of the actual lyric, “I made that b**** famous.”‘
In an effort to prove Kanye’s version, Kim shared an edited clip from the studio of him calling up Taylor and seemingly getting her approval.
However, the clip shows him conveying the idea, more than the specific lyrics, and when the complete call later leaked it made it clear that the use of ‘b****,’ which seemed to be a major issue for Taylor, was left out completely.
Things seemed to settle down in subsequent years, and Kim claimed in 2019 on Watch What Happens Live that the trio had ‘moved on’ from the dispute.
That wasn’t how the Blank Space singer saw it, though, and she later said in an interview with Elle that ‘It would be nice if we could get an apology from people who bully us.
‘But maybe all I’ll ever get is the satisfaction of knowing I could survive it, and thrive in spite of it,’ she added, via People.
Although Taylor’s career has never been better or higher profile than in the last few years, she complained in her 2023 TIME Person of the Year profile that the dispute ‘took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before.’
‘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 seethed.
Swift’s fans having been trolling Kardashian on social media due to the odd spelling of ‘thanK you aIMee,’ which appears to spell out Kim in capital letters; seen in 2022 in Newark, New Jersey
Swift also sang about changing the subject of the song’s name, which only made fans even more certain that she was referring to Kim
It is illegal to record a phone call in California, where at least some of the parties were likely located during the original exchange, without the permission of all parties on the call.
Taylor added that her distress made her move ‘to a foreign country’ in the aftermath.
‘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,’ she recalled. ‘I went down really, really hard.’
Since the release of Thank You Aimee, Swift’s fans — self-described as Swifties — have made a habit of trolling Kim in the comments of her Instagram account.