Taylor Swift’s ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’ Has a Message for Kanye West
Fans of Taylor Swift are, needless to say, obsessed with decoding her clues and references in every album she releases. With the drop of her latest, Reputation, today, the singer left pretty much nothing up to imagination in her song “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” where she apparently takes on arch-rival Kanye West for being two-faced.
Particularly telling is the following verse:
"It was so nice being friends again / There I was, giving you a second chance
But then you stabbed in the back while shaking my hand
And therein lies the issue/ Friends don't try to trick you
Get you on the phone and mind-twist you
And so I took an axe to a mended fence."
It doesn't take a detective to decipher that Swift is referring to the infamous phone call over the lyrics to his song “Famous," which involved Kim Kardashian West leaking an conversation between the Grammy winner and her husband last summer. Swift faced backlash for being a liar over the matter, but now she is revealing her side by calling West two-faced.
Swift has had a rocky relationship with since 2009 after he interrupted her MTV VMAs acceptance speech to note that Beyoncé should have won the award instead of her. It's been a long time. And it ain't apparently goin' nowhere.
Swift's first single from Reputation, "Look What You Made Me Do," contains the line "I don't like your tilted stage," which many fans considered a direct reference to the tilted stage West utilized on his recent Saint Pablo tour.
At any rate, it does not appear that Swift is ready to bury the axe. As she notes in her song, "Forgiveness is a nice thing to do / I can’t even say it with a straight face."
Reputation was released Nov. 10 at midnight and immediately soared to the top of the iTunes charts. As expected, it was not not immediately available from any streaming service except via a promotion from iHeartRadio.
The Evolution of Taylor Swift: Virtuous to Vengeful