Yesterday, I commented on how the bully and victim roles/relationship played out by Sketchers fanatic/antisemite Kanye West and Cinderella Taylor Swift actually started back in 2009 at the MTV Video Music Awards when the former stole the limelight from the latter to make a pointless point.
This week, with the release of Midnights – the biggest selling, week one album since the last time she achieved that feat – we see how Taylor Swift is continuing to dig the knife into her one-time nemesis (probably still, but everyone concerned is too busy dropping $2 billion from their fortune in one day as stated by Kanye this morning on Instagram to care.
A little backstory though is required. Taylor Swift has always been really good at giving rivals and ex-paramours their comeuppance in print and song, as well as some love.
Luckily, she still likes her current beau, as “Gorgeous” concerns her new boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, Swift but there is also a not-so-hidden twist of the knife toward a certain ex (or exes) in the lyric “I’ve got a boyfriend/He’s older than us/He’s in the club doing I don’t know what,” which could be about either of old boyfriends Calvin Harris (DJ/producer 33) or Tom Hiddleston (actor/MCU warrior 36). That’s a two for one. BOOM.
On Harry Styles, Swift wrote on “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and the lines “I knew his world moved too fast and burned too bright. But I just thought, how can the devil be pulling you toward someone who looks so much like an angel when he smiles at you?”
On Jake Gyllenhaal, she wrote “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and the breakup lyrics “I’m really gonna miss you picking fights/And me falling for it screaming that I’m right/And you would hide away and find your peace of mind/With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.” Damn, picking on a man’s records. That’s cold.
On John Mayer, Swift penned “Dear John” and again pointed out the man’s age difference with “Dear John, I see it all now that you’re gone/Don’t you think I was too young/To be messed with?/The girl in the dress/ Cried the whole way home, I should’ve known.”
Taylor Lautner, Joe Jonas, Patrick Kennedy. Surely, there is more bite to be found among her lyrics if Swifties can get busy.
Now, however, with Midnights, Taylor Swift reserves most of her bile for Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, two individuals who surely have wronged Swiftie within the last 15 years – she never forgets. Read all about that blood feud here.
While most of the newly released album is a loosely knotted concept album about after-hour dreams, nightmares and neurosis and personal confessions, a song such as “Vigilante Shit” may actually be poking holes into the one-time marrieds and now weirdly splitting marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s divorce.
“Now she gets the house, gets the kids, gets the pride / Picture me, thick as thieves with your ex-wife/And she looks so pretty/ Driving in your Benz.”
Then there is “Karma,” a wounding song from Midnights that could be about Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, and/or Scooter Braun, the man responsible for all-but stealing her catalog’s publishing from under Swift and causing her to re-record, for better or worse, all of her pre-2020 albums.
“This is my worst case scenario,” Swift wrote on her Tumblr in June 2019 of the deal that found Braun buying the song catalog of her first six albums from Scott Borchetta of Big Machine Records, then selling off Swift’s masters to private equity firm Shamrock Holdings in November 2020.
“This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it. When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them,” she continued. “Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”
The biting lyrics to “Karma” are as follows – and note the use of the word, “opacity”. Good one.
You’re talking shit for the hell of it
Addicted to betrayal, but you’re relevant
You’re terrified to look down
‘Cause if you dare, you’ll see the glare
Of everyone you burned just to get there
It’s coming back around
And I keep my side of the street clean
You wouldn’t know what I mean
‘Cause karma is my boyfriend
Karma is a god
Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend
Karma’s a relaxing thought
Aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?
Sweet like honey, karma is a cat
Purring in my lap ’cause it loves me
Flexing like a goddamn acrobat
Me and karma vibe like that
Spiderboy, king of thieves
Weave your little webs of opacity
My pennies made your crown
Trick me once, trick me twice
Don’t you know that cash ain’t the only price?
It’s coming back around
And I keep my side of the street clean
You wouldn’t know what I mean
‘Cause karma is my boyfriend
Karma is a god
Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend
Karma’s a relaxing thought
Aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?
Sweet like honey, karma is a cat
Purring in my lap ’cause it loves me
Flexing like a goddamn acrobat
Me and karma vibe like that
Ask me what I learned from all those years
Ask me what I earned from all those tears
Ask me why so many fade when I’m still here
‘Cause karma is the thunder
Rattling your ground
Karma’s on your scent like a bounty hunter
Karma’s gonna track you down
Step by step, from town to town
Sweet like justice, karma is a queen
Karma takes all my friends to the summit
Karma is the guy on the screen
Coming straight home to me
‘Cause karma is my boyfriend (Karma is my boyfriend)
Karma is a god
Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend (Weekend)
Karma’s a relaxing thought
Aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?
Sweet like honey, karma is a cat
Purring in my lap ’cause it loves me
Flexing like a goddamn acrobat
Me and karma vibe like that
Karma is my boyfriend
Karma is a god (Ah)
Uh-huh, mm
Karma’s a relaxing thought.
The fury and the woman scorned thing. Definitely appropriate here.
