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Taylor Swift · S3 E4
The VMA
September 13, 2009. Kanye West walks onto the stage while she holds the microphone. What happens in the years that follow.
Taylor Swift is nineteen years old, standing on the VMA stage at Radio City Music Hall, holding her first MTV award, when Kanye West walks up and takes the microphone out of her hands. Eleven million people are watching live.
"Blank Space" -- Taylor Swift, official music video (2014). Taylor plays a version of herself as the media sees her: dramatic, vindictive, unhinged. The VMA moment creates a media caricature, and five years later she writes a pop song that weaponizes it. This video is the long-game response to being interrupted on that stage.
Blank Space
Co-written with Max Martin and Shellback, "Blank Space" takes every criticism thrown at Taylor since the VMA incident, every tabloid headline about serial dating and playing the victim, and turns them into a pop song so catchy that the people who created the narrative end up singing along. The production is sleek, the melody is immaculate, and the whole thing is a trap. Listen for how Taylor delivers "got a long list of ex-lovers." The vocal is knowing, almost smirking. She is performing a character, not confessing. The girl who stood silent on the VMA stage learns to control the story by telling it herself, louder than anyone else can.
September 13, 2009
Taylor wins Best Female Video for "You Belong With Me." She is mid-sentence in her acceptance speech when Kanye West walks onto the stage, takes the microphone, and says Beyonce should have won for "Single Ladies." Taylor stands there, nineteen years old, unable to finish her speech. President Obama calls Kanye a "jackass" on a hot mic the next day. Beyonce wins Video of the Year later that same night and invites Taylor back onstage to finish her speech. Fearless sells an additional 600,000 copies in the weeks that follow.
“I was standing onstage, and I was really excited because I had just won the award. And then I was really confused, and then I was really sad. I just didn't know what to do.”
— Taylor Swift, The View, ABC, September 2009
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Taylor Swift do at the 2010 VMAs that was her real answer to Kanye West?
Bonus Listening
"Innocent" -- Taylor's direct response to Kanye West, written for Speak Now and performed at the 2010 VMAs one year after the interruption. The lyric treats him not as a villain but as someone who lost his way. "Thirty-two and still growing up now, who you are is not what you did." Forgiveness as a power move.
After Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs, another artist made a remarkable gesture later that same night. Who was it, and what did they do?
The VMA moment makes Taylor famous beyond music. But five months later, on January 31, 2010, she stands at a Grammy podium holding Album of the Year for Fearless, and she is twenty years old. Next: the youngest Album of the Year winner in Grammy history.
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