Here’s what Taylor Swift did after that infamous Kanye West phone call

There’s no denying that Taylor Swift has ruled 2023. From her record-breaking Eras Tour, to the premiere of her concert film, to her budding relationship with Travis Kelce, she’s been an ever-present force in pop culture. Time Magazine agrees: the publication has named Swift its “Person of the Year for 2023,” and with the title comes an interview where Swift has revealed more details about her career and personal life than ever before.

That includes pulling back the curtain on what happened after her infamous doctored phone call with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, which led the public to turn on Swift. 

“Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me,” Swift said of the incident, which sent her into a mental health spiral.

“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 said. “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.”

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Luckily, Swift came back stronger than ever with her next album, Reputation, and her career seems to reach a new peak with every release. 

“It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33,” she said. “And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that.”

Swift also imparted some sage advice on dealing with the haters: sit back and let them destroy themselves.

“There’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies,” she said. “Trash takes itself out every single time.”

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That includes anyone who’s tried to pit her against Beyoncé, whose Renaissance World Tour garnered endless comparisons to Swift’s own Eras Tour.

“There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé,” she said. “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”

Meanwhile, Swift and Beyoncé have no problem with one another, despite any stan wars that might be raging.

“She’s the most precious gem of a person — warm and open and funny,” Swift said of Beyoncé. “And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.”

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