Kim Kardashian's past comments about Taylor Swift tell us exactly how she’s going to react to her new album.

ICYMI (have you been living under a rock?!) Taylor Swift released her eleventh studio album last weekend and quite frankly the Swifties have been working on overdrive trying to decipher every last lyric.

The Tortured Poets Department arrived in our clutches with much fanfare, as was expected from one of the most prolific and celebrated musicians of our time. Coming with all the hallmarks of a Taylor Swift project, TTPD did not disappoint on the lyricism front with her keen knack for being able to poetically transcribe the inner workings of her brain into catchy songs coming through strong once again.

Amongst the 31 tracks featured across The Tortured Poets Department album and supplementary anthology bonus, there are nuggets aplenty that punctuate exactly what Swift has been experiencing over the past few years. There are nods to her breakup from Joe Alwyn, salacious tidbits surrounding her short-lived fling with Matty Healy, and cheeky winks at her new relationship with NFL player Travis Kelce.

Oh and what's this? Yup, a potential regurgitation of a feud we all thought was long buried.

Kim Kardashian has once again entered the chat. Or at the very least the track listing.

A potential Kim Kardashian diss track.

After fans went through the album with a fine tooth comb one song stuck out as being a potential signifier that this feud isn't as squashed as we were led to believe.

At first glance, you don't need to read too deep between the lines to see that the track 'thanK you aIMee' quite literally spells out 'KIM' in capital letters. Sure, those letters could be an abbreviation for a number of things (Kissing In Mouth?) but when breaking down the lyrics it feels an awful lot like Swift is purposefully mentioning her former enemy.

"And one day, your kid comes home singin' A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.

There's a bronze spray-tanned statue of you.

Each time that Aimee stomped across my gravе / And then she wrote hеadlines / In the local paper, laughing at each baby step I'd take.

Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman / But she used to say she wished that you were dead.

And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue / I don't think you've changed much."

So, is it a Kim Kardashian diss track? The internet seems to think so.

Remember when we thought The Tortured Poets Department was a Joe Alwyn breakup album and then Taylor Swift took out Matt Healy and Kim Kardashian too?

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) April 19, 2024

taylor swift just made a diss track about kim kardashian in 2024 #TSTTPD    pic.twitter.com/7ZgFU9iatQ

— _ZEPHYR_8_ (@Zephyr_8______) April 19, 2024

I’m sorry but Kim Kardashian won because why is Taylor swift putting her name in a song title over a phone call that happened like 8 years ago. It’s insane how much of her brand is based off of getting revenge

— rebranding ↻ (@anntwituser) April 19, 2024

A history of Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift's feud.

Pop culture real ones will know that the Taylor Swift vs. Kim Kardashian/Kanye West saga has spanned over a number of years and has been a beef that will go down in the history books. Fraught with diss tracks, public spats and redacted apologies, as far as celebrity feuds go this one has had us all in a chokehold.

It all began in 2009 when a 19-year-old Swift accepted the MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video. What happened next kicked off the bad blood when Kanye West walked up on stage and interrupted Swift in the middle of her acceptance speech in images which have now been seared into our brain. He more or less denounced her win and instead told the whole world Beyoncé was the more deserving musician.

"Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!"

Looking back we can all agree it was a brazen move from West and a disappointing abuse of his fame to publically embarrass Swift on such a large scale. It was behaviour we've now come to expect not accept from the contentious rapper.

However, in 2010 he momentarily saw the error in his ways and offered up an apology in the form of a Tweet. 

"I'm sorry, Taylor," he wrote. "We're both artists, and the media and managers are trying to get between us. She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you [Twitter co-founders] Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly."

Later in 2010 and again in 2013 it appears the relationship isn't so solid with West seemingly backtracking on his apology in an interview with The New York Times saying he doesn't "have one regret," in regards to his storming of the stage.

Then in 2015 they seemed to turn a new leaf and there were even mentions of a musical collaboration between the two musicians.

"She wants to get in the studio and we're definitely going to go in," Kanye said in an interview with Ryan Seacrest. "I don't have an elitism about music, I don't discriminate."

Well, that was short-lived because by 2016 West released an explosive rap track called 'Famous' which featured some pretty sexist and degrading lyrics about Swift.

"I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous," he rapped.

As furore over the lyrics erupted West quickly defended himself by releasing a statement where he claimed a phone call took place between the two with Swift giving her blessing on the mention.

"I called Taylor and had a hour-long convo with her about the line and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings," he said.

But Swift's camp were having none of that and responded with their own version of events.

"Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single 'Famous' on her Twitter account," read a statement. "She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, "I made that bitch famous.'"

In 2016, Swift won Album of the Year for 1989 and took the opportunity to dig her heels in and send a very clear message to West.

"As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there—there are going to be people along the way who are going to try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame," she said.

"But if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going, you'll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world."

But it absolutely did not stop there. In an interview with GQ Magazine Kim Kardashian decided to step in and defend her husband by claiming that a phone conversation regarding 'Famous' did go down and there's even video footage to back it up.

"She totally approved that," said Kim. "She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn't. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved."

Things continued to bubble over in June, 2016 when West released the video clip for 'Famous' which showed a naked, wax figure of Swift in bed with a number of over notable celebrities - a move that was largely condemned by the internet.

A month later Kardashian then lit a match when she released the recording of West's phone conversation with Swift.

Swift released a statement where she claimed that the final lyrics in the song were not as discussed and she would like to be removed from this "narrative".

Image: Twitter/@taylorswift13

Almost a year later Swift decided it was her time to release a diss track dropping the song 'Look What You Made Me Do' from her sixth album Reputation. It was hard not to see this as a big nod towards everything that had gone down with Kardashian and West, most obviously due to the heavy use of snakes in the video clip — a reference to the 'snake' title given to Swift after the released phone call. 

In a 2019 interview with Elle magazine, Swift publically referred to Kardashian and West as bullies who purposefully tried to take her down.

"In my experience, I've come to see that bullies want to be feared and taken seriously," she said. "A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the internet. The fact that so many people jumped on board with it led me to feeling lower than I've ever felt in my life.

"It would be nice if we could get an apology from people who bully us, but maybe all I'll ever get is the satisfaction of knowing I could survive it, and thrive in spite of it."

In 2020 as the pandemic was beginning to take the world by storm, an unedited version of the infamous phone call between West and Swift was released. This version seemed to give some grace to Swift's claims that she was never told about the exact lyrics intended to be used.

Buuuut Kardashian was having none of that and released a statement further backing up her claims and going so far as to saying she low key wants nothing to do with this drama anymore.

"Taylor Swift has chosen to reignite an old exchange - that at this point in time feels very self-serving given the suffering millions of real victims are facing right now. I didn't feel that need to comment a few days ago, and I'm actually really embarrassed and mortified to be doing it right now, but because she continues to speak on it, I feel I'm left without a choice but to respond because she is actually lying," she said.

 "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..." They clearly spoke so I let you all see that. Nobody ever denied the word "bitch" was used without her permission. At the time when they spoke the song had not been fully written yet, but as everyone can see in the video, she manipulated the truth of their actual conversation in her statement when her team said she "declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.

This will be the last time I speak on this because honestly, nobody cares."

Oooft.

Then a year later in 2021 Kardashian had only positive things to say about the singer when she was asked what her favourite Taylor Swift album while on the Honestly podcast.

"I really like a lot of her songs," she said. "They're all super cute and catchy. I'd have to look in my phone to get a name [of an album]."

But despite this in 2023 Swift opened up about how difficult it was navigating a way through the mental load of the feud in an interview with Time magazine.

"Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me," she said. "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. That took me down psychologically to a place I’d 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."

While there was never any apology from either side it felt like perhaps the feud had done its time and all parties perhaps unofficially agreed to let sleeping dogs lie and move on. Or so we thought until the release of Swift's latest album.

How will Kim Kardashian respond to Taylor Swift's song.

And so begins a new chapter in this decades old feud. At this point Kardashian hasn't responded to the song and we have good reason to believe she won't.

Well, not yet anyway.

You see, we've learned to pick the ebs and flows of the inner workings of the Kardashian-Jenner marketing machine and this time around will be no different.

We know the trope about Kris Jenner being the ultimate momager mastermind is well-worn at this point but her control over the narrative is still sharp as ever. Kim Kardashian's response to this latest regurgitation of the feud will be meticulously planned to get the highest level of coverage possible. And most importantly: show her in the best light.

Make no mistake, this will be used as leverage and it will be executed with precision.

We expect to see a Kardashian response, polished and packaged, in the next season of The Kardashians — which is exactly the way Jenner wants it.

Remembering that time Kris Jenner tried to end the Kim Kardashian vs Taylor Swift feud pic.twitter.com/h8dvw9oGtL

— Matthew Galea (@mattygalea_) April 19, 2024

We've seen this happen in seasons before and the well-oiled 'copy and paste' anatomy of a response will be enlisted again no doubt.

If our hunch is correct they'll be filming scenes for The Kardashians as we speak before it goes to air in the next six to 12 months. This will be an opportunity Jenner won't want to pass up and we'll just be here patiently waiting to consume it all. 

Feature Image: Getty.