Revisiting Taylor Swift and Kanye West's MTV VMAs Feud 15 Years Later

Elyse Dupre

September 10, 2024 at 11:00 PM·13 min read

Originally appeared on E! Online

The story of the 2009 MTV VMAs for Taylor Swift? Let’s just say, this ain’t a fairytale.

However, it began as an enchanting evening for the country-singer-turned-pop-star. Swift arrived at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in a Cinderella-esque coach Sept. 13, 2009, and you best believe she was still bejeweled when she walked in the room in a sequined gown before winning Best Female Video for “You Belong With Me.”

“Thank you so much,” the then-19-year-old said after accepting the award from presenters Shakira and ex Taylor Lautner. “I always dreamed about what it would be like to maybe win one of these someday, but I never actually thought that it would happen. I sing country music so thank you so much for giving me a chance to win a VMA award.”

But before she was given a chance to finish her speech, Kanye West interrupted to express how he felt the trophy should have gone to Beyoncé for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

"Yo, Taylor,” the rapper said. “I’m really happy for you. Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.”

More from E! Online

Dave Grohl Reveals He Fathered Baby Outside of Marriage to Jordyn Blum
TikToker Caleb Graves, 35, Shared Haunting Video Before Dying at Disney Half-Marathon
Princess Charlotte Has the Best Reaction to Parents William and Kate’s Major PDA Moment

While the audience booed West as he exited the stage, Swift thought their reaction was directed at her.

“It was so echoey in there,” the 34-year-old recalled in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana. “At the time, I didn’t know they were booing him doing that. I thought that they were booing me. For someone who’s built their whole belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing is a pretty formative experience.”

Shocked by what had happened, Beyoncé took the stage after winning Video of the Year at the end of the night and invited Swift to “have her moment.” Still, the impact of what West had done wasn’t something Swift could just shake off.

“That was like sort of a catalyst for a lot of psychological paths that I went down, and not all of them were beneficial,” she continued in the doc. “It was all fueled by not feeling like I belonged there.”

Taylor Swift, Kanye West, 2009 VMAs — Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Nevertheless, Swift—who’d been a fan of West—made it clear she didn’t want any bad blood.

“I don’t know him,” she shared in footage captured by Entertainment Tonight, “and I don’t want to start anything.”

Of course, West’s interruption did start something that turned into one of the most-talked-about celebrity feuds. Although, it initially looked like the Grammy winners would put the whole thing behind them.

Days after the VMAs, Swift told ABC News Radio West called her and “was very sincere in his apology,” which she accepted. She even played “Innocent”—a song rumored to be about forgiving him—at the ceremony the following year.

As for West, he told Jay Leno shortly after the 2009 VMAs that his behavior was “wrong” and “rude period.” (Though, a year later, he described the moment to Ellen DeGeneres as one of "sincerity or alcohol” and that he considered himself a “soldier of culture.” He also told The New York Times in 2013 that he didn’t regret the onstage interruption and that he apologized out of peer pressure).

By 2015, Swift, West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian were spotted chatting it up at the Grammys.

“I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with him until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me, and he wasn’t ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me—so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time,” the “Fearless” artist told Vanity Fair that year. “I became friends with Jay-Z, and I think it was important, for Jay-Z, for Kanye and I to get along.”

And she noted she liked West “as a person. And that’s a really good, nice first step, a nice place for us to be.”

Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Grammy Awards — Kevin Mazur/WireImage

So when Swift was asked to present him with the Video Vanguard Award at the 2015 VMAs in what was expected to be a full-circle moment, she agreed.

Playing off their “infamous encounter” from the night they met six years prior, Swift said, “I guess I have to say to the other winners tonight, ‘I’m really happy for you, and Imma let you finish. But Kanye West has had one of the greatest careers of all time.’”

But then in 2016, West released his song and music video for “Famous.” And fans watched the feud begin again.

To sum it up swiftly, Swift said West never told her about the lyric, “I made that b---h famous." However, he and Kardashian said he’d given Swift a heads-up about the song—with the reality star telling GQ at the time, “She totally approved that.”

That summer, Kardashian posted videos to Snapchat that appeared to show Swift and West discussing The Life of Pablo track. Swift responded by asking, “Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that b---h’ in his song? It doesn’t exist because it never happened.”

“Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination,” she later added in part of her social media post. “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009.”

Looking back on the incident during a 2023 interview with TIME, Swift said the scandal felt like “a career death.”

“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,” she continued. “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.”

Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner, 2015 VMAs — John Shearer/Getty Images

As Swift—who'd also addressed the song during her Album of the Year acceptance speech at the 2016 Grammys—has explained, the issue was bigger than the lyric and took into account her history with West.

In 2019, she told Rolling Stone that reconnecting with him after the 2009 VMAs incident “was healing some childhood rejection or something from when I was 19" and that she’d just wanted West’s respect.

But then the 2015 VMAs happened. And while West called Swift “gracious” for presenting him with the award, he also said, “You know how many times they announced Taylor was gonna give me the award because it got them more ratings?” In that moment, Swift told the magazine, she felt a “chill” in her body.

“I realized he is so two-faced,” she continued. “That he wants to be nice to me behind the scenes, but then he wants to look cool, get up in front of everyone and talk s--t. And I was so upset. He wanted me to come talk to him after the event in his dressing room. I wouldn’t go. So then he sent this big, big thing of flowers the next day to apologize. And I was like, ‘You know what? I really don’t want us to be on bad terms again. So whatever, I’m just going to move past this.’”

And she thought they had—until she heard “Famous.”

“So when he gets on the phone with me, and I was so touched that he would be respectful and, like, tell me about this one line in the song,” she added to the outlet. “And I was like, ‘OK, good. We’re back on good terms.’ And then when I heard the song, I was like, ‘I’m done with this. If you want to be on bad terms, let’s be on bad terms, but just be real about it.'"

For Kardashian, she expressed how, at the time, she felt like she had to defend West (this was before their divorce and his antisemitic comments).

And while the SKIMS founder told Andy Cohen in 2019 that she was “over” the feud with Swift, it resurfaced again when what appeared to be extended footage from that phone call leaked online.

“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…'" Kardashian tweeted. “They clearly spoke so I let you all see that. Nobody ever denied the word ‘b---h’ was used without her permission.”

So yes, you could say there have been different eras of the feud, which have occasionally popped up in Swift’s music. Take her 2017 reputation album or 2024 track “thanK you aIMee”—more recently called “thank You aimEe.” And while fans have their own theories on the songs (pointing to how the capitalized letters spell out “Kim” as well as West’s new name “Ye”), Swift hasn’t been as cryptic about her feelings toward the song.

"It really makes me think about how every time someone talks s--t, it just makes me work even harder and it makes me even tougher,” she said during one of her June Eras Tour concerts in London, per Parade. “So, it also makes me incredibly thankful for those people.”

Fans will just have to stay tuned to see what the 2024 MTV VMAs will bring…ready for it? The event will take place Sept. 11 at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York.

For now, keep reading to look back at more memorable VMA moments from over the years.