Taylor Swift ‘thanks’ Kim Kardashian on Tortured Poets song

Taylor Swift fans are convinced that the musician alludes to her years-long feud with Kim Kardashian on new album The Tortured Poets Department, as she seemingly makes several references to the reality star in her song “thanK you aIMee”.

The pop star released her 11th studio albumat midnight ET on Friday 19 April. Only a few hours later, she announced a surprise “2am version” that extended the record to a further 15 songs.

The first sign that the album’s 24th track from her new album might be a reference to Kardashian is the capitalisation of the letters K, I and M to spell out her first name.

There are other clues. It appears that Swift could be making a reference to Kardashian’s 10-year-old daughter North West dancing to her 2014 single “Shake It Off” on TikTok. “Shake It Off” is about ignoring “haters”.

She also mentions “Aimee” stomping over her grave, possibly nodding to the one she crawls out of in her music video for “Look What You Made Me Do”, from her 2017 album Reputation. This was widely interpreted as a “revenge album” after Swift was “cancelled” in 2016, after her feud with Kardashian errupted.

“And maybe you’ve reframed it,” Swift sings.

“And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue/ I don’t think you’ve changed much/ And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues/ And one day, your kid comes home singin’/ A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.”

She then sings the chorus: “All the time you were throwing punches, it was all for nothing.”

“And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel/ Screamed “F*** you, Aimee” to the night sky, as the blood was gushin’/ But I can’t forget the way you made me heal.”

Fans have been reacting to the clues, with one writing on X/Twitter: “I DID NOT HAVE TAYLOR SWIFT GAGGING KIM KARDASHIAN ON MY 2024 BINGO CARD.”

Other fans have been gone as far as labelling “thanK you aIMee” as a “diss track”.

“Taylor Swift releasing a Kim Kardashian diss track at 2am was not on my april 19 bingo card,” added a fan.

Swift and Kardashian’s long-term feud began when the reality star’s then-boyfriend, rapper Kanye West, famously stormed the stage at the VMAs when Swift won the prize for Best Female Video in 2009, as he protested that Beyonce deserved the award for “Single Ladies”.

After marrying West in 2014, Kardashian was at his side when he received the Vanguard Award at the VMAs.

Appearing to show that any animosity was quashed, it was Swift who presented him with the prize. However, in a later interview, Swift claimed that the pair didn’t speak backstage.

She told Rolling Stone: “I’m standing in the audience with my arm around his wife, and this chill ran through my body.

“I realized he is so two-faced. 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***. And I was so upset. He wanted me to come talk to him after the event in his dressing room. I wouldn’t go.”

Then, in 2016, West released his song “Famous”, which featured the lyrics: “I feel like me and Taylor Swift might still have sex/ Why? I made that b**** famous.”

West and Kardashian leaked a phone call that appeared to show Swift approving to have her name used in the song, which is something the “Cardigan” singer denied.

Swift’s team immediately denied the claims in a statement, claiming that West hadn’t run the lyrics past Taylor, but had instead asked her to promote the song: “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. 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.’”

This led many to brand Swift as a “snake” and this backlash led to the pop star taking a hiatus from the public eye.

“My career was taken away from me,” Swift told Time in an interview for her Person of the Year 2023 award.

“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’ve 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 any more. I went down really, really hard.”

“I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she said.

The Independent has contacted representatives for Swift and Kardashian for comment.