Taylor Swift’s seventh studio album, Lover, came out on Friday and, not surprisingly, some of Kanye West’s headlines came out. Some speculate that the recording’s opening song, “I Forgot You Existed”, could be a reference to Swift and Ye’s old feud. The lyrics are very fuzzy – because they tend to be in his songs – so it’s hard to state with certainty that Kanye was the person who “did it wrong”. However, Swift sells four luxurious editions of Beloved, each of which comes with 30 different pages from her diary that came from when she was 13 years old, and one of the parts is clear about Kanye.
On September 18, 2009 – five days after the famous VMA incident – Taylor wrote about how he felt about Kanye storming the stage and stealing his moment. The entry has the tone and depth of a middle school student, even though Taylor was 20 years old at the time. “Ahh things can change in a week,” he said cheerfully. “Just say, if you tell me Kanye West will be the number one focus of this week, the media, and my part at VMA, I will see you with your eyes crossed … If you tell me that one of the biggest stars in music will jump on stage and announce that he thought I shouldn’t win on the live broadcast, I would say ‘Those things don’t really happen in real life … “.
So that’s that. Taylor Swift’s personal reflection about being humiliated in front of millions of people during what was supposed to be the proudest moment was: oh, that’s strange. I would not be surprised to learn that this diary entry was made recently to give fans an encouraging feeling that they got a few spoons and first-person narratives from their careers, when there really were only a few without any sense of observation.
While Taylor has accepted the mistake of repeating his Kanye beef in the past, I think it was an important milestone in his life that made sense to share in a curated diary for fans. This week, Billboard also decided to repeat the iconic VMA scandal by collecting oral history from the accounts of staff and event organizers.