He’s got 99 problems, and the Tay and Ye feud ain’t one. Vanity Fair‘s September issue cover girl, Taylor Swift, revealed to the mag how she reconciled with Kanye West after he rudely interrupted her VMAs speech in 2009 — and it’s all thanks to Jay Z.
“I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with [West] until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me,” Swift, 25, reflected on their history of beef. “And he wasn’t ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me—so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time.”
In 2009, West bombarded the stage at the MTV VMAs after Swift edged out Beyonce in the category of Best Female Video. “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time,” West said on live television. “One of the best videos of all time!” The now-notorious incident left Swift utterly mortified.
Amid the awkwardness, Beyonce’s husband decided to intervene. “I became friends with Jay Z,” said the 1989 hitmaker, looking striking on the Mario Testino-shot cover. “And I think it was important, for Jay Z, for Kanye and I to get along.”
Now, the two support each other — in public and behind closed doors. “Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I’ve accomplished,” Swift shared, “and I could ask him how his kid [daughter North West] is doing.”
Though her friendship with West is formed, nothing compares to her bond with her tight-knit, ever-growing clique of super girls including bestie Selena Gomez, supermodels Karlie Kloss and Gigi Hadid, actresses Lena Dunham and Jaime King, and many more.
“When you’ve got this group of girls who need each other as much as we need each other,” Swift continued. “In this climate, when it’s so hard for women to be understood and portrayed the right way in the media… now more than ever, we need to be good and kind to each other, and not judge each other—and just because you have the same taste in men, we don’t hold that against each other.”
The country star-turned pop singer joked that there’s even some overlap in the dating pool. (Swift’s first love Joe Jonas is currently dating her pal Hadid.) “We even have girls in our group who have dated the same people,” she noted. “It’s almost like the sisterhood has such a higher place on the list of priorities for us. It’s so much more important than some guy that it didn’t work out with.”
In fact, she turns to other powerful women for inspiration when it comes to her friendships and more. “If you look at Oprah, she’s made so many people happy over the years,” Swift said of the mogul. “She’s made so much money, but she’s given so much of it away… Same thing with Angelina Jolie. She’s been so productive, but she’s used that position to better other people’s lives, and I think that’s where I’d want to be.”
For Swift, it started with self love. “That was the way that I decided to go on with my life,” she told Vanity Fair of romance. “Not looking for anything, not necessarily being open to anything, and only being open to the idea that, if I found someone who would never try to change me, that would be the only person I could fall in love with. Because, you know, I was in love with my life.” Swift started dating Scottish DJ Calvin Harris this past April, and the power pair is still together.
“For me, it could be a lot worse, and I’d still be like insanely happy with her,” Harris told KISS FM UK last month of his relationship, adding in another interview that he was blown away by Swift’s many talents. “It’s boxes I didn’t even know existed, she ticks,” he said to HITS Radio.
