Country singer Zach Bryan does not want bad blood with Taylor Swift — or her fans.
On Thursday, the “I Remember Everything” singer apologized to Swift for remarks he has since described as “rude” and “desensitized.”
Bryan had mentioned the “Bad Blood” singer in a Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter, in which he appeared to diss her by comparing her to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. He also seemingly took a jab at the Kansas City Chiefs — the NFL team Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, plays for.
“Eagles > chiefs,” he wrote, followed by: “Kanye > Taylor.”
“Who’s with me,” he added.
Bryan wrote on X the following day to say that he loves Swift, Variety reported. He said his previous tweet was simply him “drunkenly” tweeting about Ye after listening to Swift’s song “thank you aimee” — a rumored dig at Ye and his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.
His X account was deactivated amid the backlash.
Bryan shared several lengthy posts on his Instagram Stories about the ordeal on Thursday.
“For the record guys I wasn’t coming for Taylor the other night,” he wrote. “I was drunkenly comparing two records and it came out wrong. I know there’s a lot of stuff that clouds around Ye and I was speaking purely musically.”
“I love Taylor’s music and pray you guys know I’m human and tweet stupid things often,” he continued, before later adding: “I’m sorry to any Taylor fans I pissed off or let her down.”
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Bryan said in the posts that he has had a difficult year and that he’s been trying to “cope.”
“I think I was projecting a little,” he said in one post. “To be completely honest, it just came off as rude and desensitized to Taylor.”
“Don’t drink and tweet. Don’t drink and tweet!!” he added.
Swift and Ye have had a well-documented yearslong feud that began when Ye ran onstage to protest Swift’s big win at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Fans of Swift have speculated that her new song “thanK you aIMee” is intentionally stylized so that the capital letters spell out “KIM,” in reference to Kardashian.
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In 2016, the reality TV star publicly shared portions of a recorded phone call between Swift and Ye in an effort to prove Swift had completely approved of lyrics that mentioned her in Ye’s song “Famous” — a claim that Swift has denied.
Last month, Swift dropped a live version of “thanK you aIMee” that capitalizes YE in the title— an apparent reference to the rapper.
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