For Swift, the issue was bigger than the lyric and encompassed her history with West.
Ever since the 2009 VMAs, she told Rolling Stone in 2019, she wanted West’s respect. And when they reconnected, she continued, she felt like she was “healing some childhood rejection or something from when I was 19.”
But old wounds opened at the 2015 VMAs after Swift presented West with the award and he said, “You know how many times they announced Taylor was gonna give me the award because it got them more ratings?”
“I realized he is so two-faced,” she added. “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 told the magazine. “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.’”