Taylor Swift laughs about forgiving Kanye West during The Eras Tour in Seattle - feud explained

Taylor Swift laughed off the idea of forgiving Kanye West during the surprise song set of The Eras Tour show at Lumen Field in Seattle on 22 July. The pair have been in a longstanding feud which began at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

During the surprise song set of her three-and-a-half-hour long show, the singer performed an acoustic version of the song “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” from her album “reputation”. Swift sung the line ‘because forgiveness is a nice thing to do”, and laughed after before adding: “I can barely say it with a straight face”. The recorded version of the song also includes a laugh.

This marked the first time in five years that Swift had performed the track which is famously aimed at West. The feud began in 2009 when West jumped on stage to interrupt Swift’s acceptance speech for video of the year. West emerged on the stage and took the microphone from Swift, saying “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all-time! One of the best videos of all-time.”

Following the event the pair seemed to have moved on and were pictured together at multiple events. However, their feud came to a head when Kanye West released his 2016 song “Famous” in which West referred to Swift as a “B****”. Swift responded to the song saying she didn’t sign off on that which led West and his then wife Kim Kardashian to leak an edited conversation between the rapper and singer.

Kardashian called out Swift and referred to her as a snake upon the release of the call, saying in a tweet: “Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!”. Following the fall-out, Swift removed herself from the public eye before releasing her comeback album “reputation” which featured the song she performed over the weekend.

Swift spoke with Vogue in 2019 about the situation saying “a mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote cancelled, is a very isolating experience. When you say someone is cancelled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, "Kill yourself."’

She opened up about the creative process in the wake of the scandal, which reportedly, inspired the tracks This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things and Look What You Made Me Do, saying: “I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it,

“It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”