Taylor Swift Just Changed the Name of This Song to Seemingly Diss Kanye West

taylor swift kanye west
Tay Just Changed This Song Name to Reference KanyeGetty Images

It’s been 84 years (’kay, more like 14 weeks) since Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department nabbed the number 1 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart. And thanks to Swifties everywhere, it’s pretty much stayed that way ever since—even blocking Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 from a chart-topping debut this past week.

Fast-forward to yesterday (August 15), and fans clocked that—on top of the chart win—the musician released a truly *chef’s kiss* live mashup of The Tortured Poets Department’s “thank You aimEe” and Speak Now’s “Mean.” And in case ya didn’t notice, the former track was actually renamed from the original “thanK You aIMee” in a move that can only be described as 👀 👀 👀.

A reminder that the track’s original title capitalized letters “KIM,” which obvi led fans to believe it was about Kim Kardashian. Now, the capital letters spell out “YE” in a seemingly targeted dig at Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.

Idk about you, but this is pretty much how we’re feeling about the whole “thanK you aIMee” to “thank You aimEe” switcheroo:

Quick history lesson for ya: The Taylor and Kanye feud goes *checks calendar* waaaaaay back to 2009 when the rapper infamously interrupted the singer’s acceptance speech during the MTV Video Music Awards to point out that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” video—which lost to Tay’s “You Belong With Me” visuals—was “one of the best videos of all time.” And the rest is, how you say, history!

2009 mtv video music awards show
Christopher Polk - Getty Images

The two seemingly mended their ’ship until things went south again after Kanye referenced Taylor in his 2016 song “Famous,” which the singer publicly said she didn’t approve of. It was then that the rapper’s then-wife, Kim Kardashian, leaked a secretly recorded phone call between the performers.

Tay has largely kept her opinions about the whole sitch private after the explosive backlash she faced at the time—save for some iconic tracks she’s written in the time since and her whole Reputation era, which we are eternally grateful for. That! Said!!! In December 2023, the musician called the entire ordeal a “fully manufactured frame job” in an interview with Time.

During the convo, the musician described 2016 as a year of personal crisis and saw the fallout of Kim’s edited phone call as “getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity.”

“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,” Tay said. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. 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.”

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