On Friday, Oct. 21 at midnight, Taylor Swift dropped Midnights (and, three hours later, released seven bonus tracks, but that’s a whole other story). And while all of her songs have fans buzzing — whether they’re obsessing about Joe Alywn co-writing “Sweet Nothing” or theorizing about the Easter eggs in the “Anti-Hero” music video — one song that Swifties can’t stop talking about is “Karma.” Ever since the track name was released a couple of weeks ago, fans have been wondering if the song is about Kanye West and Kim Kardashian — and now that the actual song and lyrics are out, is the theory really true?
Prior to Midnights’ release, fans began to theorize that a song on the album may be about West and Kardashian when it was speculated that Swift and Drake wrote a diss track together about the ex-couple. On Sept. 30, a source told The Sun, “Taylor has pivoted her focus to re-recording Reputation and she has come across this song she made with Drake, which never saw the light of day. She knows that everyone is going to think it is about KimYe because it was her row with them, which inspired a lot of Reputation. But this one is far more direct than the other songs, which was why they didn’t decide to release it in the first place.” Drake’s voice isn’t anywhere in “Karma,” though, and he’s not named as a co-writer. Those credits went to Jack Antonoff, Zoë Kravitz (yes, the actress), Mark A. Spears, Keanu Torres, and Jahaan Sweet.
On Oct. 6, when Swift announced the name of the title track on TikTok, she laughed until the video cut out, causing fans to speculate that the song may be about KimYe. Swifties took to the comment section of the video, saying, “THIS ONE SERIOUSLY MADE ME GASP,” and “I KNOW THE KARMA TRUTHERS ARE THROWING UP RIGHT NOW.”
Confused? Yeah, me too. Basically, some Swifties have a theory that Swift has a secret, unreleased album called Karma from 2016 — because, up until 2016, Swift had dropped an album every two years like clockwork. For example, Red came out in 2012, 1989 debuted in 2014, and so on. But Swift skipped 2016, and instead released Reputation in 2017. So, what happened in 2016, you might ask? That was the year Kardashian leaked part of the phone call between Swift and West about his song “Famous,” which caused her to take a near year-long hiatus from the spotlight. Yeah, yikes. (It was a very dark year for Swifties.)
But there’s more potential evidence that Karma might just be an unreleased album from Swift. In the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do” from Reputation, Swift cut off the wings from an plane with the words “TS6” on it (Swift’s sixth album, which ended up being Reputation) and spray painted the word “reputation” on it as she sang the lines, “The world moves on, another day, another drama drama / But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma.” And in the music video for “The Man” from Lover, a poster reading “MISSING: IF FOUND RETURN TO TAYLOR SWIFT” was taped up next to “KARMA” graffiti. So, is an entire Swift era missing? And are we now getting a piece of it with “Karma”?
On Oct. 6, a Twitter user started to put two and two together, saying, “October 6, 2016, the original demo of Kanye’s song Famous leaked with the full lyrics about Taylor. October 6, 2022, Taylor announces Karma. Coincidence? I think not.” Another fan tweeted, “Karma is definitely about Kanye because it’s definitely not a coincidence that it’s Track 11 when Innocent (her song forgiving Kanye for the 2009 incident originally), is Track 11 too.” Wait… Swifties may be onto something here.
And now that “Karma” has officially been released, the lyrics may just be pointing to KimYe. In the song, Swift sings, “I keep my side of the street clean / You wouldn’t know what I mean,” perhaps referring to Kardashian’s leak of the phone call. Swift continues in the chorus, “‘Cause karma is my boyfriend / Karma is a god” — and West has infamously called himself “a god” before, might I add. Hmm. And in the bridge of “Karma,” Swift sings, “Ask me what I learned from all those years / Ask me what I earned from all those tears / Ask me why so many fade, but I’m still here” — and fans know that Swift’s beef with West goes way back “all those years,” when West interrupted her at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts, and they’re pretty much sold that “Karma” is about West and Kardashian.
Will fans ever know if “Karma” is truly about West and Kardashian and everything that went down back in 2016? Probably not — but these theories are certainly pretty convincing.