Taylor Swift has time for a little revenge. The “Cruel Summer” singer raised eyebrows after releasing a live version of her The Tortured Poets Department song “thanK you aIMee” mashed up with Speak Now’s “Mean,” which she performed at her June 22 Eras Tour show in London.
But it wasn’t just the song’s release that was a surprise, as fans quickly noticed Taylor had updated the unconventional capitalisation of the title to “thank You aimEe,” seemingly nodding to her longtime feud with Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.
Fans previously speculated that the original version’s capitalisation threw shade at Kim Kardashian, who helped escalate Taylor and Kanye’s clash while she and the “Heartless” rapper were married, like when she shared footage of the infamous 2016 phone call between Taylor and Kanye.
And Taylor herself has provided some insight into her inspiration for the song. While performing the TTPD track in London, she explained its significance.
“It really makes me think about how every time someone talks s–t, it just makes me work even harder and it makes me even tougher,” she told the crowd at Wembley Stadium June 22, per Parade. “So, it also makes me incredibly thankful for those people.” The 34-year-old also made a change to the lyrics from “Mean” on the new mashup, updating the line, “Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me,” to “Someday I’ll be singing this song at Wembley.” In the crowd for the live reveal of “thank you aIMee” was Taylor’s mom Andrea Swift, who gets a shoutout on the track. During the performance, the 66-year-old was spotted waving her arms enthusiastically from the VIP tent alongside Taylor’s boyfriend Travis Kelce.
While the “Fortnight” singer has never explicitly named who the song is about, the lyrics in “thanK you aiMEe” appear to reference the time after her feud with Kim and Kanye.
“And it wasn’t a fair fight, or a clean kill / Each time that Aimee stomped across my grave,” the Grammy winner sings in the song’s second verse. “And then she wrote headlines / In the local paper, laughing at each baby step I’d take.”
And Taylor has been candid about her mental health during the public fallout. As she recounted to TIME in December, “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.”