Kim Kardashian outs Taylor Swift’s chat with Kanye West about ‘Famous’ and nobody gets out unscathed

Hello and welcome to “The Hunger Games,” Kim Kardashian-Taylor Swift-Kanye West edition. Warning: There are no heroes here.

Kardashian launched an assault on Swift on Sunday night, posting video online of the pop star talking by phone to Kanye West about the line in his track “Famous” that went, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”

Then social media, including some of Swift’s famous friends, went a little bit nuts. Amusingly and uncharacteristically, West has kept his social-media mouth shut. Go figure. 

That lyric, of course, is what most people assumed the “Shake It Off” singer was referencing at the 2015 Grammys when she advised “all the young women out there” against being hijacked by people who would try to take credit for your success. It’s also a line that Kardashian and West have said Swift was totally cool with when he called to give her a heads-up that it was coming.

And that phone chat is the one Kardashian made public on Snapchat on Sunday after teasing coyly to the  less-ubiquitous social media platform via old-school Twitter.

During the taped conversation, West — who notoriously started things in 2009 when he stole Swift’s thunder at the MTV Video Music Awards — shared the “might still have sex” part of the lyric with her and says, “I just feel like I have a responsibility to you as a friend” to tell her what he was doing. He thanked her “for being so cool about it.” 

Among Swift’s comments to West in the heavily edited video: “I really appreciate you telling me about it, that's really nice.” “It’s like a compliment.” “I never would have expected you to tell me about a line in your song.” “I don’t think anyone would listen to that and be like, ‘Oh, that’s a real hit. She must be crying.’” “I’m always going to respect you, and I’m really glad you have respect to call me and tell me that as a friend about the song … it’s a really cool thing for you, and a really good show of friendship, so thank you.” 

It’s hard to imagine that kind of conversation going down between Swift and, say, John Mayer or Harry Styles or Joe Jonas before she released songs referencing her relationships with them. But we digress.

Swift also talked to West about what her response could be if she were asked about the lyric, and how it would be “really cool” for her to say, hey, he told me about it ahead of time. “‘Joke’s on you, guys, we’re friends.’”

Clearly, that was not her response to the mention at the Grammys, which happened right after “Famous” was released. She’s saying now that he never told her the full lyric and she was not cool with Kardashian’s guerrilla move Sunday.

"Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me 'that bitch' in his song? It doesn't exist because it never happened,” Swift said in a statement on Instagram captioned, “That moment when Kanye West secretly records your phone call, then Kim posts it on the Internet.”

“Of course I wanted to like the song. I wanted to believe Kanye when he told me that I would love the song. ... He promised to play the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot 'approve' a song you haven't heard,” she continued.

"Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination. I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009."

Swift’s famous friends chose to enter the Sunday night fray, which was trending online as #KimExposedTaylorParty.

“There are more important things to talk about... Why can't people use their voice for something that … matters?" singer Selena Gomez tweeted, expressing, incidentally, a sentiment frequently offered by people offended by the very existence of celebrity news in a world filled with terrorist attacks and racial strife.

She then declared the music industry to be disappointing but “the most influential,” which is on its own pretty dang amusing. Cue the #SelenaGomezIsOver hashtag. Yes, that happened.

Victoria’s Secret model Martha Hunt called the whole story “fabricated” and urged the spreading of love, while Chloe Grace Moretz said, “ Everyone in this industry needs to get their heads out of a hole and look around to realize what's ACTUALLY happening in the REAL world.”

However, real-world social media — i.e., not celebrities telling the world what’s important — was definitely more about spreading schadenfreude and general hilarity.

The timing of Kardashian’s posting is rather unfortunate for Swift, whose ex Calvin Harris was just trashing on the pop star last week after Team Taylor revealed that under an assumed name Swift had indeed co-written a song with him. Wouldn’t be that big of an issue, except that in promoting said song Harris said he and she had never discussed collaborating. Awkward. 

In the GQ article in which Kardashian charged that Swift and West had talked about the “Famous” lyric in advance, the reality TV star said another nugget of proof exists: “Maybe,” Kim told the magazine, there’s also “an attorney's letter she sent saying, ‘Don't ever let that footage come out of me saying that. Destroy it.’”

(At this point, we will have a moment of silence in honor of Mel Gibson while we completely ignore all questions about the state-by-state laws about “secretly” recorded phone calls.)

Clearly, the footage was never destroyed and “closure” doesn’t seem like it’s coming any time soon. Time to pass that popcorn, boys and girls: This show’s not over yet. 

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Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ.