Kanye West and Taylor Swift will forever be linked together.
Kanye was the big man on campus when he interrupted poor little Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video during the 2009 MTV VMAS.
It’s amazing to think now, but that was Taylor’s coming out party. Before that now-infamous incident, Taylor’s name only rang bells in circles where folks still greeted people using the word “howdy.”
That can’t be said anymore.
Taylor’s fourth and latest album Red hit stores this week and it will have sold 1 million copies by the time Billboard tallies sh*t on Wednesday. It is the second Taylor album in a row that will ship platinum in seven days.
Some of the success of the new project has to do with how catchy the album’s first single, “We’re Never Ever Getting Back Together” is. But really, the success of Taylor’s new album comes with who “We’re Never Ever Getting Back Together” is about, just as much as how the song sounds.
Since Taylor has been on the scene, she has been in about a dozen relationships or flings with other notable leading men, this includes Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more white guys with the scruffy look. (And, as I write this, news comes out that she just broke up with the Kennedy kid, Conor.)
Those brief flings and romances have led to some of Taylor’s most notable songs, like “Dear John,” “Forever and Always” and “Back to December” and of course, Red’s first single.
Clearly, Taylor is that girl that will run to her diary and drain her heart out every time a boyfriend wrongs her, which I guess is what makes her so appealing to her young teenage fans.
Taylor might act a little sheepish about her being-dumped-roll, but the truth is, she knows what she’s doing and she’ll play it up when she has to, like when she appeared on Ellen DeGeneres yesterday.
This brings us to Kanye West, her one time adversary. Similar to how Taylor acts in her personal relationships, after the whole “Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time” thing, she went right to her diary and got turnt up, recording “Innocent.”
It was a move that I now find ironic, considering that Kanye West and Taylor Swift are two similar beasts.
Every single Kanye West album has a theme. His last two, 808 and Heartbreaks and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, have been about love, or more appropriately, falling out of love. Heartbreaks was about dealing with the loss of his mother, who died due to complications from surgery, and his breakup with his fiancé at the time, Alexis Phifer. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which is viewed as his best album, is just a big middle finger to Amber Rose.
Essentially, for both Kanye and Taylor, the break up business has been good business — especially if we know the counterpart. And in the end, the listener ends up winning.
All I have to say is, I can’t wait to hear what Taylor has to say about Conor and what Kanye has to say about Kim Kardashian (when we get to that bridge, of course.)
Dimas S.
Tweet at me and stuff. @Milkman__Dead
