A bonus track on Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department has listeners theorizing that the singer is talking about Kim Kardashian. The track “thanK you aIMee” is stylized so that the capital letters spell out the name “Kim” and the track “Cassandra” seems to reference the night that she got “the call” from Kardashian and Kanye West.
Swift begins the song singing, “When I picture my hometown, there’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you,” which can be interpreted as a pointed reference to Kardashian’s deep tan. In the chorus, Swift sings, “All that time you were throwin’ punches, I was buildin’ somethin.’ And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel. Screamed “Fuck you, Aimee” to the night sky, as the blood was gushin’. But I can’t forget the way you made me heal.”
Swift and Kardashian have had bad blood since 2016, when Kardashian uploaded a three-minute snippet of what was later revealed to be a 25-minute phone call that made it seem like Swift approved of Kanye West’s song “Famous,” which includes the line, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that b-tch famous,” a reference to his infamous moment with Swift at the 2009 VMAs. Swift later said she did not approve of him calling her “that b-tch” and didn’t know he was going to refer to her that way. Kardashian uploaded her video to make it seem like Swift was lying about and said that Swift “totally knew.”
The resulting drama between Swift, Kardashian, and West served as the inspiration for Swift’s 2017 album, Reputation. Now, the singer is invoking it again in her new album. In the song, she refers to their clash in 2016 in the second verse, singing, it “wasn’t a fair fight, or a clean kill.” Their beef seemed to have cut Swift deep and taken a toll: “Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman, but she used to say she wished that you were dead.”
On the bridge, she lifts herself and tells this “Aimee” character that she might not know how much what she did may have hurt her and that Aimee might have “reframed it” in her head. “I don’t think you’ve changed much, and so I changed your name, and any real defining clues,” she sings. “And one day, your kid comes home singin’ a song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” This seems to be a reference to North West singing “Shake It Off” to her mother in a TikTok they posted to their account in 2023. The song, though from 2014, references Swift’s haters—a major one seeming to be Kardashian.
In the last chorus of “thanK you aIMee,” the lyrics change a bit. Throughout the song, she says that she screamed “F-ck You Aimee” to the night sky, but in the last chorus, she thanks Aimee for putting her through this, because she’s healed and come out the other side of it.
Write to Moises Mendez II at [email protected]
