Taylor Swift Debuts ‘thanK you aIMee,’ Allegedly About Kim Kardashian Feud, Live at London Eras Concert.
Taylor Swift played a mashup of her new track “thanK you aIMee” from her latest album “The Tortured Poets Department” with her 2010 hit “Mean” during her Eras Tour in London.
Known for addressing her feuds through music, Swift revisited her longstanding conflict with Kim Kardashian at Wembley Stadium over the weekend. Performing “thanK you aIMee” live for the first time, Swift introduced the song by reflecting on how criticism drives her. “It really makes me think about how every time someone talks s—, it just makes me work even harder and it makes me even tougher,” Swift said.
“So, it also makes me incredibly thankful for those people.”
The song’s title, with its emphasized capital K, I, and M, hints at its subject. In “thanK you aIMee,” Swift sings about a school bully named Aimee, expressing gratitude for building “a legacy which you can’t undo” and acknowledging “there wouldn’t be this, if there hadn’t been you.”
Swift then transitioned into “Mean,” a song from her 2010 album “Speak Now” that addresses her early critics.
The feud between Swift and Kardashian dates back to the 2009 MTV VMAs when Kanye West, Kardashian’s then-future ex-husband, interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech. This incident sparked a long-running conflict. Kardashian became involved in 2016 with the release of West’s song “Famous,” which included controversial lyrics about Swift.
Swift denounced the song upon its release, but Kardashian claimed Swift had approved it beforehand, even leaking a recorded phone call to support her claim. In the call, Swift is heard saying, “If people ask me about it, look, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘He called me and told me before it came out … Joke’s on you, guys. We’re fine.'”
Swift, however, insisted she had not heard the entire song and was unaware of the explicit lyrics. She clarified, “Of course, I wanted to like the song. I wanted to believe Kanye when he told me that I would love the song. I wanted us to have a friendly relationship,” she explained. “He promised to play the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard. Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination.”
Swift addressed the incident in her 2017 album “Reputation” and specifically in the lead single “Look What You Made Me Do.” In 2020, unedited footage of the phone call surfaced online, leading both Kardashian and Swift to reaffirm their previous positions. Kardashian later expressed confusion over why Swift couldn’t move on, while Swift described the incident as feeling like “career death” in her 2023 Time Person of the Year profile.
Swift recorded two songs on “The Tortured Poets Department” that fans believe reference Kardashian: “Cassandra” and “thanK you aIMee,” bringing the saga full circle.
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