Taylor's New Song "Thank You Aimee" Is A Not-So-Subtle Kim K Diss

It’s true what the tortured poets say: old habits die screaming. While most of Taylor Swift’s new album seems to be about her love life — ranging from bitter exes to her current football-feuled euphoria — there’s one track that’s pretty clearly devoted to her years-long nemesis, Kim Kardashian. In the very pointed (and intentionally capitalized) “thanK you aIMee,” Swift sings about a bully named Aimee who would “push [her] down the stairs” and “beat [her] spirit black and blue.” It’s not just some sus lyrics that suggest Aimee is actually Kardashian; the song’s title literally spells it out.

In the week leading up to Tortured Poets Department, Swift emphasized the importance of intentional capitalization in her lyrics, tasking fans with hunting down wrongly capitalized letters in her old songs to spell out a message. (The code wound up being the opening line to “How Will It End?”: “We hereby conduct this post-mortem.”). With Swifties primed to read into capital letters, the track “thanK you aIMee” immediately stood out. Yep, the not-so-secret code hiding in the title is “Kim.”

As if that wasn’t clear enough, the song’s lyrics repeatedly reference Kardashian. “When I picture my hometown / There's a bronze spray-tanned statue of you,” Swift sings in the opening. In the chorus, Swift remarks that “all the time you were throwin’ punches / I was buildin’ something,” possibly alluding to how Swift used her public feud with Kardashian in 2016 to create her 2017 album Reputation.

She also mentions how Aimee “stomped across [her] grave,” which calls back to the imagery of Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” video.

But the true standout lyric in “thanK you aIMee” comes in the bridge, as Swift sings: “And one day, your kid comes home singin' / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.”

The line appears to be a nod to a TikTok Kardashian posted with her daughter North West, in which the pair danced to Swift’s song “Shake It Off.”

While it sounds like Swift still has some complicated feelings about Kardashian, the song ends with the singer thanking “Aimee” for pushing her to achieve even greater successes. In recent years, Swift and Kardashian haven’t given an update on where they currently stand, although there have been some clues that their relationship improved after Kardashian divorced Kanye West in 2021. Only time will tell if “thanK you aIMee” changes anything between the two.