Taylor Swift and Kanye West changed for the worse in 2009, when he interrupted her VMA acceptance speech. While Swift and West seemingly reached a friendlier place several years after the incident, controversy over his song “Famous” derailed any progress they made.
While Swift didn’t see any humor in West’s interruption of her speech, she did find some value in the lessons it taught her. She even kept a framed photo of the moment in her home.
Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift while she gave an acceptance speech
In 2009, Swift’s music video for “You Belong With Me” won her her first VMA for Best Female Video. When she took the stage to accept the trophy, West got up with her and said, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!”
The crowd began to boo West for the interruption, but Swift said she initially thought they were booing her.
“It was so echo-y in there. At the time, I didn’t know they were booing him doing that,” she said in her Miss Americana documentary. “I thought they were booing me.”
She said the moment left her deeply rattled.
“For someone who has built their whole belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing is a pretty formative experience,” she said. “That was a sort of catalyst for a lot of psychological paths that I went on and not all of them were beneficial. It was all fueled by me not feeling like I belonged there. I’m only here because I work hard and I’m nice to people.”
Taylor Swift kept a framed photo of the moment Kanye West interrupted her
Three years later, Swift was still unable to look back on the incident and laugh. She said she learned a valuable lesson about the unpredictability of life from it, though.
“[It made me] realize nothing is gonna go exactly the way that you plan it to,” she told Rolling Stone. “Just because you make a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.”
In order to continually remind herself of this, Swift hung a framed photo of the incident above the fireplace in her Nashville home. The image had the caption, “Life is full of little interruptions.”
He has recently made derogatory remarks about her
West and Swift seemingly moved past the incident, their feud reignited in 2016 when West released the song “Famous.” The subsequent fallout over the song’s lyrics has left Swift on decidedly unfriendly terms with West and his former wife, Kim Kardashian.
This April, West added fuel to the fire by making claims about Swift’s sexual history. In a since-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), West claimed Swift had sexual intercourse with Justin Bieber and Harry Styles at the same time. In his post, he described it as an “example of racism” that the group didn’t “call” him.
Swift has reportedly described West’s claim as defamatory and could be seeking legal action against him.
