It’s been a particularly gruesome season of the “Thrones”-ian spectacle of music meeting celebrity, and the bloodiest of the episodes may well be the hand-waving freakouttery that is the Taylor Swift/Kanye West/Kim Kardashian feud. For those who’ve been living inside a Pokémon Go cave or simply detached from the real-time celebrity drip-feed of social media (god you're lucky), let’s quickly review the latest.
On Sunday, Kim Kardashian posted clips on her Snapchat from Kanye's long-ass phone call with Taylor, regarding his now-infamous “Famous” lyric (“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous”). When “Famous” first arrived back in February, Kanye said that Swift signed off on the lyric, finding it funny. Taylor, meanwhile, released a statement saying she “cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message,” adding that she was never made aware of the “bitch” line. In Kim's footage, Swift agreed to… something: “[Go with] whatever line you think is better. It’s obviously very tongue in cheek either way. And I really appreciate you telling me about it, that’s really nice.” In a supposedly spontaneous response to the leak, Taylor likened the situation to “character assassination,” saying that she wants to be “excluded from the narrative.” (This was after Swift’s lawyers reportedly threatened the Wests with legal action, for recording the call without her consent.)
The collected works of Shakespeare are less analyzed.
Let's start with the leaks. A rule: Nothing in celebrityland is spontaneous. And another: Nothing is spontaneous that’s recorded. Kardashians, as a species symbiotic with cameras and as a family who lives story arcs instead of life events, naturally record and plan narratives for almost everything. What good is a business call with Rick Rubin if it can’t eventually fuel the dramatic shit factory? And Swift’s response was less stream-of-consciousness than *image-*consciousness: Those who know the UI of the iOS Notes app (or know PR) may suspect it was written in advance. It’s also worth noting that Swift’s 1989 singles cycle has long died down and that she tends to release albums in the fall, and that such extramusical fascinations are potent fuel for album cycles. The clips, while polite, come off less camaraderie than verbal documentation: “I’d never expect you to tell me about a line in your song,” Swift tells West in the recording—and here things become interesting.
There are, of course, innumerable examples of musicians writing about other musicians, from scene- or legacy-setting details to would-be cross-promotional synergy to diss tracks of varying specificity to just sheer meme value. Swift is especially prolific on this front: Her first single, written her freshman year of high school, sings the nostalgic praises of Tim McGraw, and of course there’s the quiver of weaponized subsongs—“Dear John,” “Mean,” “Better Than Revenge,” “Bad Blood”—that she’s subsequently aimed at every other enemy or ex. The more public a figure, the more their name becomes shorthand—a way to add a little punch to pop with minimal extra songwriting effort. Ask Pink about being compared to damn Britney Spears, or Kesha and Adam Levine about the merits of one Mick Jagger, or entire swaths of artists about Bowie and Prince and Michael.
For the most part, these name-checks range from neutral to positive; even when negative, the publicity generated by a mention in a hit usually outweighs the immediate embarrassment, in the long run. But in music as in memoir, asking permission is fraught and ethically gray. For each Anne Lamott—“You own everything that happened to you…. if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better,” the memoirist wrote—there’s someone arguing for restraint, either for reasons of consent (is this person OK with this?) or of covering one’s ass (will this person retaliate?). Songwriters generally don’t ask for permission. Not only are the logistics of coordinating with artists and their teams tricky—Kanye doesn’t know whether Swift still uses her Nashville phone number, what hope do less-connected artists have?—they don’t have to. Short of blatant libel (hard to prove, especially for public figures), artists can pretty much say whatever they want, about whomever, prompted or not.
Take perhaps the closest analogue to the Leaks of Pablo: Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady.” The video, a blow-up doll tackython, is like “Famous” with no attempt to be art. The lyric goes a diss further by dropping VD into his imagined fucksploits of Christina Aguilera, Fred Durst, Carson Daly, and beyond. Yet in 2016, this all seems almost quaint. We got a couple angry interviews, a hug at the 2002 VMAs, a quasi-answer track (by someone named Emily Ellis, misattributed in those Napster days to Xtina herself), and some escalatingly desperate attempts on Em’s part to attach his decades-old drama to newcomers (Miley, Lohan, the Kardashians eventually)—but little ado. Was it really just a simpler time?
Let’s get back to that “narrative” bit. Swift’s issue was not with the sex line nor even—once you really get down to it—the “bitch” (hip-hop ubiquity, not that it makes it “right”), but the “narrative.” The idea that her fame was not of her own unmessed-with making. Pop is music plus branding divided by label and manager cohorts, and there is to be no breaking of the elaborate kayfabe and label-approved narrative fanfiction and brand-on-brand combat. It reaches everywhere: Twitter mentions, awards-show boosting, and lyrics. The history of pop music in the past two decades is the history of its expansion: 360 deals, ever-increasing social media platforms, exclusive streaming platforms, more and more opportunities for artists and their teams to push their narrative without others’ interference.
And it’s one thing to have your name dropped unprompted, quite another to have your brand construed as something it’s not. Corporations take this sort of thing to court—most notably in music, 2002’s Mattel Inc. vs. MCA Records, in which the company sued over Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” sexing up the doll. (They lost; this is the lawsuit that introduced to the judicial record the sentence, “The parties are advised to chill.”) And while people and their names aren’t enforceably trademarked the way “this sick beat” unfortunately is, they’re still worth millions—quite literally. Industry listings routinely advise songwriters to avoid proper names in lyrics, for many reasons (brand conflicts, issues with licensing for TV and film and ads, universality, not being the person to namecheck Iggy Azalea in 2017), but among them is the risk of breaking the rules of engagement. To mention an artist’s name is loaded: it’s making someone’s moves for them.
The Kardashians know this. Kanye knows this, more than he’s given credit for. And Taylor—mentioned in interviews since her teens as precociously meticulous about her public image—knows this very well. Taylor Swift, the personality, gained her fans by seeming to live a coming-of-age story alongside them; Taylor Swift, the businesswoman, gained success by writing one, deliberately. The difference is crucial. She knows how precarious it is to balance her persona between “sweet Southern girl next door who likes cats and baking and romance” and “untouchable leader of cyborg model squad”—and how impossible it is to add “Kardashian-adjacent fame seeker” to the mix. The only way to make it work is to make it seem like an accident. And so, “permission” becomes a phrase like “empowerment”: a vague idea no one could take issue with, heavy with the moral issues of the day, to serve as a neat curtain over mercenary matters.
