Taylor Swift Finally Condemns ‘Repulsive’ White Supremacists—and Slams Kanye West: ‘He Is So Two-Faced’
Nearly a month after the release of Lover, one of Taylor Swift’s most autobiographical albums to date, the pop star opened up to Rolling Stone in an in-depth profile. The interview, published on Wednesday morning, is further proof that Swift may finally be ready to show us the “real Taylor” three years after dramatically declaring the old wide-eyed, red-lip-classic version of herself dead.
In fact, in the piece, she finally breaks down the meaning behind the notorious “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now” line from Reputation. “I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s,” Swift told Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt, who also interviewed her for the magazine back in 2012. “That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone.” As for why she delivered the line as a staticky voicemail greeting during the bridge of a spiteful, Right Said Fred-tinged revenge anthem, “that’s how all of this started, a stupid phone call I shouldn’t have picked up.”
The 29-year-old is, of course, referring to her secretly recorded phone call with Kanye West in which she seems to give him permission to write about her in his 2016 song “Famous,” a call that reignited a celebrity feud of biblical proportions and could have doubled as a publicity campaign for the green snake emoji. In the damning recording, leaked by West’s wife Kim Kardashian, Swift can be heard consenting to the song lyric, “me and Taylor might still have sex.” She has since maintained, however, that he never sought her approval for the lyric she actually took issue with, the one that comes afterwards that says, “I made that bitch famous.” Specifically, she had a problem with him calling her “bitch.” This account seems to be corroborated by the recording, in which Kanye does not mention that second line.