In a new, in-depth interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Taylor Swift has opened up about her row with Kanye West, singing about boyfriends and the highs and lows of her career.
Swift has had a famously rocky relationship with West since the infamous "Imma let you finish" incident at the VMAs in 2009, when West charged the stage and declared that the Best Female Music Video award should have gone to Beyonce.
But after the incident, Swift tells Rolling Stone that they started to be friends again: "I started to feel like we reconnected, which felt great for me, because all I ever wanted my whole career after that thing happened in 2009 was for him to respect me."
But the popstar explains how things went south again at the 2015 VMAs, when West received the Vanguard Award.
"He called me up, maybe a week or so before the event, and we had maybe over an hour long conversation, and he’s like, 'I really, really would like for you to present this Vanguard Award to me, this would mean so much to me,' and went into all the reasons why it means so much, because he can be so sweet. He can be the sweetest" she tells Rolling Stone.
"And so I wrote this speech up" she continues, "and then we get to the VMAs and I make this speech and he screams, 'MTV got Taylor Swift up here to present me this award for ratings!' [His exact words: 'You know how many times they announced Taylor was going to give me the award ’cause it got them more ratings?'] And I’m standing in the audience with my arm around his wife, and this chill ran through my body. I realized he is so two-faced."
Swift said Kanye "wanted me to come talk to him after the event in his dressing room. I wouldn’t go. So then he sent this big, big thing of flowers the next day to apologize. And I was like, 'You know what? I really don’t want us to be on bad terms again. So whatever, I’m just going to move past this.' So when he gets on the phone with me, and I was so touched that he would be respectful and, like, tell me about this one line in the song."
The line in the song Swift is referring to is the "Taylor and me might still have sex" but she adds, "when I heard the song [which also included the line 'I made that b**ch famous'] I was like, 'I’m done with this. If you want to be on bad terms, let’s be on bad terms.'"
In the interview, Swift also opens up about critics, including Lorde and Haley Kiyoko, who eventually became friends.
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"Some of my best friendships came from people publicly criticising me and then it opening up a conversation" she says, citing an example in her friend Lorde. "Like, Ella — Lorde — the first thing she ever said about me publicly was a criticism of my image or whatever. But I can’t really respond to someone saying, 'You, as a human being, are fake.'"
Swift, who is in a relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, added that she found singing about relationships easier than talking about them.
"Singing about something helps you to express it in a way that feels more accurate" she says, "You cannot, no matter what, put words in a quote and have it move someone the same way as if you heard those words with the perfect sonic representation of that feeling."
Taylor Swift - In pictures
