Billboard forced to apologise for sharing Taylor Swift ‘revenge porn’

Billboard has ignited the wrath of Taylor Swift fans by posting an image of a nude wax figure of the star, widely considered to be ‘revenge porn.’ 

The famous American music sight – responsible for industry-defining music charts including the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200 – has posted a countdown of the 25 most influential pop stars of the last century, beginning in August. 

When naming Taylor Swift number two (only outranked by Beyonce), the outlet posted a montage video of her accomplishments that included a clip from Kanye West’s music video for his 2016 song Famous, which controversially features a naked wax figure of Swift. 

The video was part of an ongoing feud between Swift and West, which first arose when he grabbed the microphone from her at the VMAs in 2009 to claim that Beyonce should have won the award Swift was accepting. 

Famous includes lyrics that claim that West and Swift ‘might still have sex’ because he ‘made that b***h famous.’ The feud continued after the release of the music video, with Swift claiming West didn’t have permission to use her nude likeness. 

Four years later, a phone conversation between West and Swift revealed that Swift was at least partly aware of the song’s lyrics, though he did not tell her he would use the world ‘b****.’ 

Fans were furious that Billboard included the clip from the controversial music video, calling it ‘revenge porn.’ 

‘After crossing over from country music to pop music at the turn of the 2010s, @taylorswift achieved success like we’ve never quite seen before, in either shape or size,’ the outlet wrote on Instagram under the video, which has now been taken down. 

‘Billboard looks back at the century in Swift, who took pop stardom to places we hadn’t previously thought possible.’

After deleting the video, Billboard posted an apology: ‘We are deeply sorry to Taylor Swift and all of our readers and viewers that in a video celebrating Swift’s achievements, we included a clip that falsely depicted her. We have removed the clip from our video and sincerely regret the harm we caused with this error.’

Many fans felt this wasn’t an adequate apology. 

@willnights1 wrote: ‘It isn’t an error btw, an error could be including a wrong pic or adding a wrong number or those basic things but you guys added a revenge porn to the video talking about her achievements which is unnecessary + you did it with other artists like Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna.

‘You don’t have to bring up women’s traumas every chance you get also if you guys hate female artists and hate to see them succeed just don’t talk about them?’

@imnotpopbase asked: ‘Why did it take several hours, two trending hashtags, and thousands of comments for y’all to apologize? you’re only sorry that you got caught.’

@Enddumbness agreed: ‘I don’t understand what the point of including that in the first place was 💀 what does her drama have to do with her achievements? Let alone that video.’

@Lorica1111 posted: ‘Ehhh. Not cleared. Of the 18 years of abundant footage of her you could have chosen to use in a two  minute reel ‘celebrating her succes’ for ‘winning the #2 spot’ you choose the fake, hateful footage from a Kanye song of him asserting he “made that b**** famous?” No one can tell me that wasn’t intentional disrespect.’

@gotthatohimean_ put it simply: ‘YOU’RE EMBARRASSING, posting that clip was a choice and y’all approved it!’

Neither Swift nor West has commented on the controversy so far.

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