"A Career Death": Taylor Swift On Leaked Phone Call With Kanye West

Time magazine named US pop superstar Taylor Swift as its 'Person of the Year', calling the musical force of nature the "hero of her own story." The huge $92.8 million opening earlier this year of Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" film set the tone for the "Cruel Summer" singer's 2023. Now, in an interview with the outlet, the singer stated that it felt like it was "a career death" when Kim Kardashian leaked her phone call with rapper Kanye West.

In 2016, Kim Kardashian shared audio and video of her then-husband and Taylor Swift talking on call in which the pop singer seemed to endorse the words that the rapper had written about her in his song. "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that b**** famous," Mr West wrote in the song. A spokesperson for Ms Swift refuted rumours that the singer had ever approved of the song's lyrics after it was released. There was no reference in the video where West claimed he "made her famous" or that he would call Swift a "b****" when an unedited version of the conversation was made public in 2020.

The 33-year-old singer added that it felt like it was "a career death" as it appeared that she had approved the lyrics. "Make no mistake - my career was taken away from me. 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," she told the outlet. 

The incident affected her mentally and she even moved to a new place to hide from all the attention. "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 anymore. I went down really, really hard," the "Lover" singer told Time Magazine.

The "All Too Well" singer initially seemed to accuse the rapper and his then-wife of "editing and manipulating" portions of the phone call that had surfaced in 2016, until in March 2020, when the entire phone conversation between Ms Swift and Mr West emerged online. In one of her Instagram stories about donations to charities, the singer wrote, "Instead of answering those who are asking how I feel about the video footage that leaked, proving that I was telling the truth the whole time about *that call* (you know, the one that was illegally recorded, that somebody edited and manipulated in order to frame me and put me, my family and fans through hell for four years)...SWIPE UP to see what really matters."

Responding to the same, the SKIMS founder wrote on Twitter, "@taylorswift13 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." She added that she did not edit the footage of the call."Kanye has documented the making of all of his albums for his personal archive, however has never released any of it for public consumption and the call between the two of them would have remained private or would have gone in the trash had she not lied and forced me to defend him," she continued at the time.