Taylor Swift turns 34 at career peak: her most polarizing moments

She’s been in the industry for two decades, but Taylor Swift has never been more famous than she is now. 

Named Time’s Person of the Year earlier this month, Swift is kicking off her 34th birthday on Wednesday as one of the most celebrated musicians of this generation. With a budding romance with Kansas City Chief’s tight-end Travis Kelce and a reported net worth of over a billion dollars, it’s no wonder so many people are riveted by her every move.

We take a look at some of Swift’s most polarizing moments throughout her career and how she’s continued to face celebrity conflict and defy cancel culture.

TAYLOR SWIFT IS TIME’S PERSON OF THE YEAR: 5 REVELATIONS FROM HER FIRST INTERVIEW IN YEARS

JAW-DROPPING VMA MOMENT FT. KANYE WEST

By 2009, Swift had started to introduce more pop into her classified-country style of music. Her sophomore album “Fearless” generated numerous hits, and she was nominated for ‘Best Female Video’ at the MTV Video Music Awards. Swift won for her song “You Belong With Me,” but before she could finish her acceptance speech, rapper Kanye West interrupted her, stealing the spotlight and her microphone to famously laud another nominee from the category.

“Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you. Imma let you finish. But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,” West said referencing his friend’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).” 

Thus began the tumultuous relationship between the two recording artists. 

CONTINUED FEUD WITH WEST AND KIM KARDASHIAN

By 2015, things had softened between Swift and West. 

“Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I’ve accomplished, and I could ask him how his kid’s doing,” she told Vanity Fair that year. “We haven’t planned anything,” she said of them potentially collaborating on music. “But, hey, I like him as a person. And that’s a really good, nice first step, a nice place for us to be.”

Fast-forward to April 2016 when West released his infamous track, “Famous,” where he rapped, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that b—h famous.” He received immediate backlash, but West claimed Swift had consented to the lyrics. 

She denied this.

“I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots,” Swift told TIME of that period. “Make no mistake. My career was taken away from me.” 

Kim Kardashian, West’s wife at the time, released a recording that seemed to prove Swift was aware of the song that she says was manipulated. 

“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,” Swift told the outlet. 

“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.”

She ultimately went on to write her scathing sixth studio album, “Reputation,” which includes an abundance of references to West and Kardashian.

BOYFRIEND BACKLASH

Growing up in the limelight in her late teens and early 20s, Swift has written extensively about love and heartbreak. The world quickly adopted an inordinate fascination with her dating life. Her relationship status became popular tabloid fodder.  From 2008 to 2012, Swift was linked to several high-profile men, including actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Lautner and musicians John Mayer and Harry Styles.

In a candid interview with UK Glamour from 2015, Swift shared her dismay with the overall perception of her romantic relationships. 

“I think the media has sent me a really unfair message over the past couple of years, which is that I’m not allowed to date for excitement, or fun, or new experiences or learning lessons. I’m only allowed to date if it’s for a lasting, multiple-year relationship. Otherwise I’m a, quote, ‘serial dater’. Or, quote, ‘boy crazy,’” she remarked. 

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“The narrative has been so wrong, every time it was the same. It’s ‘Taylor spotted talking to this guy, she’s chasing him.’ They create a beginning to the story that didn’t happen most of the time, so then they have to create an ending. So they always go to the same fabricated ending that every other tabloid has used in my story, which is, ‘She got too clingy’, or ‘Taylor has too many emotions, she scared him away’. Which has honestly never been the reason for any of my break-ups.”

It helped inspire her empowering anthem, “Blank Space” off her fifth album, “1989.” In it, she sings, “Saw you there and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, look at that face. You look like my next mistake. Love’s a game, wanna play?'”

“I actually started writing it as a joke,” she said on SiriusXM radio of the hit track. “I was just kind of sitting around thinking about how the media has had a field day talking about what they think my personal life is like… They’ve drawn up this fictitious profile of like this girl who’s a serial dater, and she’s like over-emotional, and she’s like unstable.”

“It was really interesting to kind of joke around with it and kind of play around with the narrative everybody else has been joking about, anyway.”

‘BAD BLOOD’ WITH KATY PERRY

As her stardom has grown, so has Swift’s list of allies and enemies. For a long period, she was feuding with friend turned foe Katy Perry. The “Firework” singer was rumored to be the inspiration behind another one of Swift’s hit songs, “Bad Blood,” also off her “1989” album.

In 2014, Swift confirmed the song was about another woman in the industry. 

“For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not,” Swift told Rolling Stone. “She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, ‘Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?'”

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“It wasn’t even about a guy,” she clarified, as both women dated Mayer. “It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational — you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So, now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”

Perry actually confirmed the song was about her during an interview with James Corden. She said the feud involved backup dancers.

Then in 2019, the fence between the two pop-stars appeared to mend, when Perry appeared in Swift’s music video for her song “You Need to Calm Down.” Both women told the media separately that they had matured from what had happened and wanted to move forward as supporters of one another.

POLITICAL SQUABBLES 

For a significant portion of her career, Swift was ridiculed for refusing to speak outwardly about politics. In 2018, she decided to make a change, endorsing a candidate in Tennessee for both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now. I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country. I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”

She outwardly condemned current Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn for the platform in which she was running her campaign.  

“I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love,” she wrote. “Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape. She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.”

Additionally, in her 2020 documentary “Miss Americana,” Swift was seen pushing back at her team, who recommended she didn’t speak out on politics. Swift was adamant that she didn’t care if the media wrote that she was speaking out against former President Trump.

SCOOTER BRAUN BUYING HER CATALOG, RE-RECORDING OF HER MUSIC

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In 2019, Swift’s entire music catalog with Big Machine Records was sold to someone she says “hates” her — Scooter Braun.

“With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” Swift told TIME. “I was so knocked on my a– by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold. I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’”

Swift says it was his ownership that ultimately inspired her to re-record her first 6 albums. 

“If you look at what I’ve put out since then, it’s more albums in the last few years than I did in the first 15 years of my career,” she noted. 

“I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned. My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art. … But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote-unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.”