Taylor Swift is not known for subtlety. So when TTPD: The Anthology dropped, Swifties immediately went to work decoding “thanK you aIMee”’s lyrics. They quickly clocked that those capitalized letters are a likely reference to Kim Kardashian, with whom Swift has had a beef since 2016.
In the song Swift sings about a high school bully, one whose “bronze, spray-tanned” statue stands in her hometown. While there are no other explicit references to her particular feud with Kardashian, the takeaway—that her experience with the bully only made her stronger—in addition to the title, seem to confirm the theories that “thanK you aIMee” is about K-I-M, not anyone named “Aimee.”
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The song’s title may also allude to Britney Spears’s 2008 song “If You Seek Amy,” another pop anthem that is…not about a woman named Amy but about something else that’s being spelled out.
In her 2023 Time person of the year cover story, Swift delved into greater detail about her fall from grace after Kardashian leaked an edited cut of Swift’s phone call with Kardashian’s then-husband Kanye West, who had asked Swift permission to name-drop her in his song “Famous.” In the edit, Swift appeared to give West her consent; she later said that she had not heard the lyric in full, in which Kanye refers to her as a “bitch” that he “made famous.”
“That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before,” she said of the fallout from the leaked recording. “I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year.
“I was afraid to get on phone calls,” she added. “I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
After the Time article was published, TMZ reported that Kardashian had never offered an apology to Swift for the leak, or the vitriol she faced in the aftermath. “Our sources say Kim’s never apologized to Taylor for the call,” TMZ claimed. “And even after the Time article, it’s still crickets.”
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