Billboard is apologizing after posting an inappropriate video of pop star Taylor Swift.
The music outlet received backlash this week for naming Swift the No. 2 greatest pop star of the 21st century, but matters were made worse when they posted video vignettes of Swift’s biggest career milestones which included a clip from Ye’s “Famous” music video.
In the video, where a replica of Swift is portrayed in the nude, Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — makes sexual innuendos about his one-time friend and longtime foe. In their apology, Billboard said it’s “deeply sorry” for its depiction of the “Fortnight” hitmaker.
“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,” Billboard wrote in a statement on X.
Swift and Ye have a long-running feud, dating back to the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when then-West interrupted the burgeoning music superstar’s acceptance speech at the VMAs. She attempted to reconnect with West in 2015, after his infamous onstage crashing of her Video Music Awards a half decade earlier.
Though they tried to form a friendship, it came crashing down when the “Famous” rapper name-checked her in his song with sexualized language, leading her to protest the track, which also said he was the reason behind Swift’s fame.
Taylor Swift: Kim Kardashian, Ye phone call was ‘frame job’
After Swift’s condemnation of “Famous,” Kim Kardashian posted an edited, recorded phone call between them that presented Swift as approving of the lyric all along.
“I started to feel like we reconnected, which felt great for me – because all I ever wanted my whole career after that thing happened in 2009 was for him to respect me,” she once said about West, describing how their ensuing friendship, including dinners out together, felt like “I was healing some childhood rejection or something from when I was 19.”
In her Time 2023 Person of the Year feature, Swift opened up about the lowest points in her career and how that helped her appreciate the highs, including her collision with Kardashian and West.
“It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,” Swift said. “The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity. The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me,” referring to Scooter Braun acquiring her masters.
Swift continued: “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,” she told Time.
