At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, the famous celebrity feud was born when Kanye West stole Taylor Swift’s microphone during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video. Since then, the two of them have had several conflicts in the public eye, from Taylor’s response song “Innocent” in 2010 to Kanye’s more recent song “Famous”.
Both of them have seen an impact on their careers and public perception as musicians because of it, and as the Taylor-Kanye drama no doubt keeps rolling, there are key takeaways we can learn for our own careers because of it.
Don’t Take A Negative Experience With You
Taylor Swift has allowed Kanye to come back into her life repeatedly, and there’s no doubt he’s affected her career. Since then, their relationship is almost always tagged with the word “feud” even when the pair are on good terms with Taylor putting up a photo on Instagram of Kanye’s flowers.
The takeaway: Don’t constantly bring up unfavorable incidents in your public or work life, or they will come back to haunt you. Don’t put the job that you quit after two weeks on your resume, and don’t talk about the bad blood (TSwift pun intended) with your past boss during an interview. Once a negative experience has been laid to rest, don’t risk digging it up again, even if you feel like you were right.
2. Mind Your Words
With the release of the recording of Taylor and Kanye’s phone call, it’s important to remember that Taylor gave express permission to him to “go with whatever line [Kanye] thinks is better.” In context, it solely applies to an explicit song lyric, but taken as it stands, Taylor is providing implied permission for complete creative freedom for Kanye to talk as he pleases about her in the song. Many people believe that that wasn’t her intention, but in their phone call she never explicitly said that her permission was only for that line, so it’s within reason for others to take it as full permission.
The takeaway: To avoid making the same mistakes, make sure you think about what you want to say (and mean) before you enter into an important event or interview, and don’t be afraid to clarify what you’re talking about. Expecting one thing and getting another because statements were misconstrued can have you at fault and you don’t want to be “famous” for that.
3. You Always Have Another Shot
Whether you look at Taylor Swift repeatedly forgiving Kanye for his attacks or Kanye repeatedly apologizing, there is one thing that you can always take from their relationship: Even if you have blunders, there’s still a good chance you’ll get a second shot. If a job isn’t going how you need it to or you can’t start on your career path like you want, there will be more opportunities to start again.
The takeaway: Go into your interviews knowing you might screw up once or twice. Go into work knowing you might not work at 100% today. Move towards your career goal knowing that you can take experience from your mistakes and that for each time you mess up, there will another chance to build your career up.
Now “Imma let you finish” with this: Bumps in the road are sure to come up in your career. It’s all about how you frame them and move on that counts so make your mistakes but don’t let them follow you.
