As Swift—who’d additionally addressed the music throughout her Album of the Year acceptance speech on the 2016 Grammys—has defined, the difficulty was larger than the lyric and took under consideration her historical past with West.

In 2019, she informed Rolling Stone that reconnecting with him after the 2009 VMAs incident “was therapeutic some childhood rejection or one thing from after I was 19″ and that she’d simply needed West’s respect.

But then the 2015 VMAs occurred. And whereas West known as Swift “gracious” for presenting him with the award, he additionally stated, “You know how many times they announced Taylor was gonna give me the award because it got them more ratings?” In that second, Swift informed the journal, she felt a (*15*) in her physique.

“I realized he is so two-faced,” she continued. “That he wants to be nice to me behind the scenes, but then he wants to look cool, get up in front of everyone and talk s–t. And I was so upset. He 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.’”

And she thought they’d—till she heard “Famous.”

“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,” she added to the outlet. “And I used to be like, ‘OK, good. We’re again on good phrases.’ And then after I heard the music, I used to be like, ‘I’m carried out with this. If you need to be on unhealthy phrases, let’s be on unhealthy phrases, however simply be actual about it.'”