By Cece G.
At the 2009 VMA award show, Taylor Swift was accepting her award for “best female music
video,” when Kanye West emerges from the audience, takes the mic from her and says, “Yo,
Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of
all time! One of the best videos of all time!” (Uitti 2023)
This sparked a mass amount of controversy. One side would say Kayne meant no harm to Taylor
and only wanted to recognize his friend Beyoncé. Another point of view would say Kanye totally
undermined Taylor and ruined a big moment for her as an upcoming artist at the time. (Grady
2019)
Later at the award show, Beyoncé won a different award and asked Taylor to come back on stage
to finish giving the speech that was taken for her. This was seen as an incredibly selfless act from
Beyoncé. The same night, Kanye would go on Twitter to write an apology to Taylor, her mother
and her fans. In short he says she is very talented and quoted a lyric of hers that he claims to have
enjoyed. (Grady 2019)
After the show, celebrities joined the conversation, like Former President Obama’s statement
when he says “the young lady seems like a perfectly nice person while Kanye is a jackass.” Kelly
Clarkson said “I think we’re all just curious as to what would make a grown man go on national
television and make a talented artist, let alone teenager, feel like shit.” On the other hand, critics
like Yolanda Sangiweni from Essence said, “If only West and Swift wouldn’t have played so
perfectly into their roles: the innocent White girl and the supposedly menacing Black man…
perhaps taking the victims route sells.” (Grady 2019)
Years later, Taylor Swift would go on to make a statement in her 2020 documentary “Miss
Americana” about the situation and say, “I thought they were booing me. The whole crowd
booing is a pretty formative experience.” She also says she felt alone, bitter and “like a wounded
animal lashing out.” (Walsh 2020)
In 2016, Kayne released his song “Famous” and the music video clearly about Taylor with lyrics
like “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that btch famous. God damn I made that btch famous.” Kanye also released this song after asking Taylor if she could release it
on her twitter, to which she did not and advised him not to release the song because of the strong
misogynistic message. Obviously, he released it anyway. (Grady 2019)
Whether or not Kanye was in the right to interrupt Taylor’s big moment (he wasn’t), the issue I
see with this situation is the different responses from each fanbase we can see today. When they
talk about the dispute of who is a better artist, Taylor Swift fans or “Swifties,” will simply
compare awards, saying Taylor has more music awards than Kayne, therefore she is the better
artist and Kanye is still a bully for the incident. On the other hand, Kanye West fans will say
demeaning things about Taylor to defend Kanye. For example in a Reddit thread asking fans why
they dislike Taylor, they say, “she’s a b*tch who makes bad music” or “She’s a spoiled brat who
grew up under rich white yankee parents.”
These are all examples of the men’s movements that revolve around being or going back to “real”
manhood. One of the Reddit threads even says, “I sometimes wonder whether alpha males’
sexual aggression or ‘toxic masculinity’ in general may be related to the same constraining
societal idealization of the ‘real man’…stiff-upper-lip physically and emotionally strong,
financially successful, confidently fights and wins, assertively solves problems, and exemplifies
sexual prowess.” So a reason for these comments against Taylor could be an effect of the
misogyny that Kanye presents. An example of that would be the VMA incident when he takes
away from a young women’s movement just to have his opinion heard.
While a Reddit comment might not be a credible source, it still poses an interesting point of
view. The different responses from the different fans could be about feminism vs. misogyny, or
they could just be about what kind of people each of their role models are. Taylor being a
relatively positive person who is almost never in a bad light, and Kanye who is often in the
media causing controversy almost always in a negative way.
The task at hand is to think about what kind of message the artists you listen to are trying to send
out and whether or not they have the best intentions for their fans. Think about the theme they
seem to have in all their songs and what that can do to an easily influenced listener. You don’t
have to stop listening to whatever artist, just be mindful of what you might be taking from the
songs or the artist.