Taylor Swift got candid in her Time magazine Person of the Year cover story, addressing everything from her relationship with Travis Kelce to the 2016 incident in which Kim Kardashian shared clips of a recorded phone call between her then-husband Kanye West and the "Karma" singer. The phone call centered on West's song "Famous," in which he raps, "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that b—h famous."
Kardashian shared edited footage of the call on her socials, making it appear as though Swift approved West's use of the lyric. However, in 2020, video footage of what is believed to be the full phone conversation was leaked, proving that the original clips shared by Kardashian were edited down.
Now, Swift is sharing the emotional toll she said the incident took on her, calling the leaked recordings "a fully manufactured frame job."
"Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me," Swift told the publication. "You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar."
(In 2020, Kardashian shared her own statement regarding the infamous phone call, writing "To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that 'Kanye never called to ask for permission...' They clearly spoke so I let you all see that. Nobody ever denied the word 'bitch' was used without her permission.")
The "Anti-Hero" singer reflected on how the phone call — and the ensuing public backlash — impacted her trust.
"That took me down psychologically to a place I've never been before," Swift said. "I moved to a foreign country. I didn't leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn't trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard."
The drama partially influenced Swift's 2017 album Reputation, which she calls "a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure."
Swift says getting "canceled within an inch of my life and sanity" taught her a valuable lesson.
"Nothing is permanent," she said. "So I'm very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I've had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I've learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art."
"But I've also learned there's no point in actively trying to quote-unquote defeat your enemies," she continued. "Trash takes itself out every single time."
