September 13, 2009
It begins. On this fateful day in New York City, a 19-year-old Taylor was at the MTV Video Music Awards, accepting the Best Female Video award for unrequited love anthem 'You Belong with Me'. During her cute acceptance speech, Kanye jumped up on the stage and grabbed the mic, interrupting with the now-immortal words: "Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!"
If you Google the words "sad kitten", you'll get a pretty good approximation of what Taylor's face looked like during this whole fiasco, while MTV's cameras cut to Beyonce herself looking horrified in the audience. Once Kanye had shrugged and handed the mic back to Taylor, her time was up.
Nobody was impressed. President Obama famously called Kanye "a jackass" over the incident. Even Katy Perry, now widely known as the subject of Swift's diss-track 'Bad Blood', was not on board: "F*** you, Kanye. It's like you stepped on a kitten," she tweeted, which is pretty much as accurate as metaphors get.
Kanye was promptly kicked out, while Beyonce used her Video of the Year win later in the evening as an opportunity to bring Swift back on stage, and let her finish her speech. Because no matter how trying the circumstances, Beyonce remains a flawless human being.