Taylor Swift kicked off her Reputation world tour last night in Phoenix. But it was neither her setlist nor her music that evening that’s drawn the most attention. Prior to taking the stage, the country-turned-pop star revealed that she and longtime nemesis Katy Perry had made amends after nearly seven years of beefing. Later, in a speech during her set, Swift finally addressed the infamous “Famous” song debacle which involved Kanye West and Kim Kardashian and resulted in Swift being marked as “a snake.”
As a refresher, Kanye’s The Life of Pablo track contained the lyrics, “Feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.” Kanye said he received Swift’s permission to use the lyrics, while Swift maintained she never okayed the track at all. Kardashian came to the defense of her husband by saying there was video of Swift and Kanye talking on the phone about the song, which Swift threatened to sue over if it were ever released.
Unnerved by Swift’s threats, Kardashian went ahead and leaked the video via Snapchat, along with a caption of “Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?” and a boatload of snake emojis. Swift called the whole thing “character assassination” and claimed Kanye never mentioned the “bitch” portion of the lyric during their phone conversation.
(Read: How Taylor Swift Became Twitter’s Public Enemy No. 1)
The “snake” label took on a life of its own and it wasn’t long before Swift became the ire of social media. She eventually embraced the “snake” thing in a way (perhaps no other choice?), though, and even ended up using it throughout her Reputation rollout, including in merch and the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do”.
In her speech last night, Swift opened up about the “snake” label, how it’s affected her negatively, and what important lessons it’s taught her about reputations, self-worth, and being in the public eye. She also classified what Kardashian did to her as bullying. “… I went through some really low times for a while because of it,” she told the crowd in Phoenix. I went through some times when I didn’t know if I was going to get to do this anymore.”
“I wanted to send a message to you guys that if someone uses namecalling to bully you on social media, and even if a lot of people jump on board with it, that doesn’t have to defeat you. It can strengthen you instead.”
She continued: “And I think something that came out of it, that was good, is that I learned a really important lesson that I’ve been telling you from the stage for about 10 years, but I never had to learn it so harshly myself. And that lesson has to do with how much you value your reputation.”
Check out video of her speech below, followed by a full transcription.
You might be wondering why there are so many snakes everywhere, huh? A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media, and it caught on. Then a lot of people were calling me a lot of things on social media. And I went through some really low times for a while because of it. I went through some times when I didn’t know if I was going to get to do this anymore.
I wanted to send a message to you guys that if someone uses namecalling to bully you on social media, and even if a lot of people jump on board with it, that doesn’t have to defeat you. It can strengthen you instead. And I think something that came out of it, that was good, is that I learned a really important lesson that I’ve been telling you from the stage for about 10 years, but I never had to learn it so harshly myself. And that lesson has to do with how much you value your reputation.
I think that the lesson is that you shouldn’t care so much if you feel misunderstood by a lot of people who don’t know you, as long as you feel understood by the people who do know you — the people who will show up for you, the people who see you as a human being.
