Earlier this year, Taylor Swift and Kanye West set aside their past creative differences to become music’s newest besties. The fast friendship was brief, but it included not-at-all-staged photo ops at the Grammys, dinner dates, and Taylor getting down to “All Day†at the Brit Awards. After all these months of letting bygones be bygones, Taylor is finally sharing the real reason she forgave Kanye — and it’s all thanks to their mutual BFF Jay Z. She tells Vanity Fair:
“I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with [West] until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me, 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. I became friends with Jay Z, and I think it was important, for Jay Z, for Kanye and I to get along. … And then Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I’ve accomplished, and I could ask him how his kid’s doing.â€
Tay also reveals the story behind her game-changing open letter to Apple, saying she wrote it at 4 a.m. and originally wasn’t going to post it on her Tumblr until she read it to her mom first. But if you think her open-mindedness to Apple Music stretches to all music-streaming services, think again: “I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine.†Tay and Spotify, it seems, still have plenty of bad blood, and Jay Z probably isn’t in a rush to play mediator this time.