One of the first things I thought of on the October night-into-morning that Taylor Swift’s new Midnights album became the first record in five years to move a million units in a week (in just three days!) and Kanye West lost the billion-dollar deal he swore he couldn’t lose with Adidas (to say nothing of a documentary, his agent at CAA, partnerships with Balenciaga and more) is an idea that goes back twelve years.
How in one pop cultural moment a psychic photo was snapped and etched into the brain of an audience at large (all of us) as to how each musician/celebrity would live their lives in public as a Cinderella and a bully: the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, the VMAs, and the interruption heard around the world.
Starting from a drunken Kanye’s on the then-VMAs red carpet, waving a bottle of Hennessy, to Swift’s heavy-handed glass pumpkin-shaped coach arrival at the VMA ball like a wannabe Disney princess to make her transition from country to pop, fortunes changed before the award ceremony ever commenced. Not because either artist has ever lost money since despite acclaimed billionaire Kanye’s current trajectory (both have been embroiled in trying to buy back their catalogs, masters and publishing rights from differing divisions of the Universal Music Corp) or respect for where they were looking to move as artists at that point. Though Swift made (in my not so humble opinion) a handful of genuinely annoyingly self-centered albums since 2009, the pandemic turned her into a folksy, more complexly introspective, outward-reaching fictional songwriter on albums such as 2020’s Folklore and Evermore – nuances she’s brought with her into 2022’s electro-pop Midnights. Since 2009, Kanye West did make one more genius classic in 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but with each great-to-good album since – Yeezus (2013), The Life of Pablo (2016), Ye (2018), Jesus Is King (2019), Donda (2021) and Donda 2 (2022) – his material has meandered as his mind has wandered (this is by no means a critique of West’s mental health issues, but rather a comment on how he culturally reacted to the world around him – which veered from mounting a Presidential run to backing Trump to saying slavery was a choice to dissing George Floyd and calling death com 3 on the whole of the Jewish people).
Both artists showed their hand at that VMAs on 2009. They proved their medal, shed their innocence (what was left of it) and became who they would always be, ugh, evermore.
There for her Cinderella C&W-to-pop moment, Swift was set to perform at the VMAs to sing “You Belong with Me,” her song whose was nominated in the Best Video by a Female Artist category with her greatest competition came from Beyoncé and her silver, black and white video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).” Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” was also up for Video of the Year VMA 2009’s Award, so no matter what, there was room for everyone to succeed especially when you consider that Swift had but one nomination that year – the Best Female Video award she won.
No sooner than Swift headed for the stage and started her acceptance speech after receiving her VMA from Shakira (“I always dreamed about what it would be like to maybe win one of these someday, but I never thought it actually would have happened. I sing country music. So thank you so much for giving me the chance to win a VMA Award!….” a drunken Kanye bounded on stage from his front row seat, bum rushed the stage, snatched the microphone from Swift’s hand and began the rant heard round the world.
“Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish,” he said. “But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time.”
Beyoncé was aghast (“Oh, Kanye,” she mouthed) when the VMA cameras cut to her in the audience. The audience of fellow musicians and fellow nominees booed, Kanye looked stupid but proud as if he did nothing wrong (his new usual), handed the microphone back to a dumbstruck Taylor and walked offstage. According to reports, Pink gave Kayne hell when the camera were off, MTV escorted him from the building (shocked that he was asked to leave), Bey welcomed Taylor to the stage during her “Video of the Year” acceptance speech, and within hours, the then-new social media program, Twitter, exploded.
Kanye may have apologized – that time – with a statement that read “I’m sooooo sorry to taylor swift and her fans and her mom. I spoke to her mother right after and she said the same thing my mother would’ve said. She is very talented! I like the lyrics about being a cheerleader and she’s in the bleachers! i’m in the wrong for going on stage and taking away from her moment!. beyonce’s video was the best of this decade! I’m sorry to my fans if I let you guys down! I’m sorry to my friends at mtv. I will apologize to taylor 2mrw. welcome to the real world! everybody wanna booooo me but i’m a fan of real pop culture! No disrespect but we watchin’ the show at the crib right now cause well you know! i’m still happy for taylor! Boooyaaawwww! you are very very talented! I gave my awards to outkast when they deserved it over me… that’s what it is!! i’m not crazy yall, i’m just real. Sorry for that! I really feel bad for taylor and i’m sincerely sorry! Much respect!!”
But that damage was done. President Barack Obama was quoted as saying that “the young lady seemed like a perfectly nice person” and that Kanye was “a jackass.” The Apprentice host, Donald Trump, called for us all to boycott Kanye West, saying, “He couldn’t care less about Beyoncé. It was grandstanding to get attention.” Opera Winfrey sent Swift a bouquet of flowers. And Katy Perry tweeted, “FUCK U KANYE. IT’S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN.”
Essence magazine’s Yolanda Sangweni wrote of the VMA incident and its fallout, that, “If only West and Swift wouldn’t have played so perfectly into their roles: the innocent White girl and the supposedly menacing Black man….Perhaps taking the victim route sells.”
After that, and a handful of reconciliations, in 2016, Kanye released his single, “Famous” with a verse that went “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous,” its video with Kanye in bed with a Swift-fake-take in the nude (without her permission). And though, Kanye said she gave him her allowance to use that verse and image, Swift said no, that was never the case. Even more famous than that feud was how West’s wife Kim Kardashian posted a series of videos on Snapchat that showed Kanye calling Swift for all permissions, Swift had kinda-sorta agreed if she was permitted to look as if she hadn’t ever heard the verse, and during an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kim uttered this: “She wanted to play the victim….It worked so well for her first time.”
Fast forward to October 25, midnight, and the release of Swift’s “Bejeweled” video hitting right around the time that Kanye got word of his fall from Adidas grace. With Haim as her horrible stepsisters and Laura Dern as an evil step mommy, there is Swift, literally this time, playing Cinderella.
And the cycle repeats.
