Swifties have bad blood with Billboard now!
The outlet faced a lot of backlash this week from Taylor Swift fans. For starters, they awarded Taylor Swift the title of the second greatest pop star of the 21st century. That was already a problem for some of her loyal followers! However, Billboard made matters worse when they posted a video on social media showing her career highlights and included a clip from Kanye West’s controversial music video Famous!
Perezcious readers know all about the longtime feud between the two artists. It all started in 2009 when the rapper interrupted her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. While the pair attempted to reconnect years later, that all came crashing down when he dropped the 2016 track Famous, which featured the offensive lyric:
“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”
Taylor insisted she never agreed to the line. Then Kim Kardashian released a secretly recorded phone call between the Lover singer and Kanye, which was later revealed to be edited to make her look like she was “lying.” At the time, he also released a music video with a naked wax figure of Taylor, which many regarded as “revenge porn” amid their beef. And Billboard included that same naked figure in a montage about her career and legacy while naming her the second greatest pop star. Yeah, we’re not kidding. Soon, the hashtags #BillboardIsOverParty and #BillboardApologizeToTaylor started to trend online as fans slammed Billboard for the “disgusting” move:
“A man should never define a woman’s success. Billboard owes Taylor Swift an apology.”
“using a clip of taylor’s naked body made without her consent should really anger every fandom. women deserve to be treated like humans by these multi billion companies”
“Okay, Billboard‘s intention was to recap everything that happened in her entire career, i get that. But was it really necessary to include THAT scene? Just nasty, disrespectful and unprofessional.”
Billboard ended up taking the video down and re-posted it without the controversial clip on Wednesday. However, Swifties were not satisfied with it! They continued to demand an apology from the outlet — and they caved on Thursday! They wrote:
“We are deeply sorry to Taylor Swift and all of our readers and viewers that in a video celebrating Swift’s achievements, we included a clip that falsely depicted her. We have removed the clip from our video and sincerely regret the harm we caused with this error.”
At this time, Taylor has not addressed the controversy. But we bet she is not too happy with the outlet!
