Taylor Swift opens her seventh album Lover with a song called “I Forgot That You Existed,” which is the perfect transition from the Reputation era into this new era of Taylor. While Taylor’s last album was heavily about how her reputation was tarnished after a very public and bitter feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Lover starts off with her letting everyone know that she’s SO done with that pettiness. It’s extremely straightforward, even just with the title of the track — she’s completely not even letting Kanye and the other haters cross her mind anymore.
Tay actually mentions the downfall of her reputation by singing, “I forgot that you got some popcorn as soon as my rep started going down, down, down.” She doesn’t make any super specific references to Kanye, but it’s no secret that their feud is what started an era of her feeling completely betrayed and ostracized. In the first verse, she actually mentions Drake, with the lyric, “I couldn’t get away from ya, in my feelings more than Drake.” This is interesting, since Kanye and Drake have had beef of their own in the past.
The main gist of the song, though, is that Taylor has finally been able to stop letting Kanye and others get to her. “I forgot that you existed,” she sings in the chorus. “I thought that it would kill me but it didn’t, and it was so nice, so peaceful and quiet, I forgot that you existed, it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference.”
In case you haven’t been following, Taylor and Kanye’s original trouble began at the 2009 VMAs when he interrupted her speech after she won Female Video of the Year. He stormed the stage and publicly embarrassed her by claiming that Beyonce should have won the award. Taylor wrote a song about it, and they kept their distance for years. However, by 2015, they made amends and she presented him with the Video Vanguard Award at the show that year. She also hung out with Kanye and Kim on other occasions.
Everything changed in Feb. 2016, though, when Kanye released his song “Famous,” which included the lyrics, “I think me and Taylor might still have sex, I made that b**** famous.” He explained that he called Taylor ahead of releasing the track to let her know about the lyrics, and that she approved them. However, when the song came out, Taylor denied doing so.
That summer, Kim released the videos of the phone call between Taylor and Kanye to defend her husband. Afterward, Taylor took to Instagram to clarify that, while she did get a call from Kanye, he didn’t tell her that he was going to refer to her as “that b****” on the track (which was evidenced in Kim’s video). They have been at odds ever since.