Despite acknowledging The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s record-breaking double album, during his opening monologue, Jimmy Kimmel refrained from torturing Monday’s guest Kim Kardashian about the poetry that is rumored to be inspired by her on the new album.
Amid tracks believed to be about The 1975 front man Matty Healy, silent film star Clara Bow, and Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, there’s a song called “thanK you aIMee,” which is thought to be a diss track aimed at Kardashian. That’s largely because of the capitalization in the title, which spells out “Kim,” plus lyrics that appear to reference the two women’s long-standing feud.
On the track, Swift sings: “And maybe you’ve reframed it / And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue. / I don’t think you’ve changed much / And so I changed your name and any real defining clues / And one day, your kid comes home singing / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you,” likely referencing Kardashian’s daughter North’s 2023 TikTok, where she can be seen dancing to Swift’s “Shake It Off.” Since the new song’s release, Kardashian has reportedly shed more than 100,000 followers, according to Us Weekly.
But both Kimmel and Kardashian, who appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote the season finale of American Horror Story: Delicate, stayed mum on all things Swift. “Life is good,” Kardashian declared at the top of her segment, where she spoke about her latest Skims products, growing up on the same block as Madonna, and the current state of her relationship with Donald Trump: “Listen, I don’t think he likes me very much. But I’m okay. I think he did amazing stuff with prison reform…so that’s what I’ll focus on.” Kimmel also asked Kardashian to debunk several non-Swift-generated internet rumors about her, including that she sleeps with her eyes “slightly open.” That one is true, according to Kardashian.
Snoozing with one eye open wouldn’t be the worst habit to develop in light of the latest development in Swift’s feud with Kardashian, which heated up in 2016 with the release of another track: Kanye West’s “Famous.” That song includes the lyrics: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” West’s then-wife Kardashian posted a video purportedly of a phone call in which Swift gave permission for West to drop her name in the song. At the time, though, Swift was apparently not told the lyrics would include calling her a “bitch.”
Swift has reflected on the incident’s long-lasting impact, telling Time magazine last year, “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
In “thanK you aIMee,” Swift acknowledges that parts of her life wouldn’t have been possible without the song’s muse—whomever they may be. “I wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool. / I built a legacy that you can’t undo,” she sings. “But when I count the scars, there’s a moment of truth / That there wouldn’t be this if there hadn’t been you.”
