Did Taylor Swift just get the last laugh? At the Seattle stop of her Eras tour this weekend, Swift let out what Page Six refers to as an “epic laugh”—not just a laugh, but an epic laugh (and the outlet is right)—while performing what the outlet calls “her Kanye West diss track ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’” for the first time in five years.
Swift hasn’t performed the song onstage since 2018 but brought it out Saturday night and “let out an epic cackle during the song” when she played the acoustic version of the song, which was on her Reputation album.
“And here’s to you, ‘cause forgiveness is a nice thing to do,” she sang before bursting out into laughter—“which she has always done while performing the song,” Page Six writes.
She eventually composed herself, but quipped “I can’t even say it with a straight face.”
The track was released after her infamous feud with West—which began at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when he interrupted her acceptance speech for the Best Video by a Female Artist Award, claiming Beyoncé should have won—and his then wife, Kim Kardashian. One fan wrote that they wished Swift had “saved this song for an L.A. performance” in case Kardashian attended with her daughter, North West. (Swift will be performing in Los Angeles from August 3 to August 9 in support of the tour.)
Swift said she dealt with the fallout from her feud with West and Kardashian by writing new songs, including this one. (Fans also think the song “Look What You Made Me Do” is about the duo.) “A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote ‘canceled,’ is a very isolating experience,” Swift told Vogue in 2019. “When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as ‘Kill yourself.’ I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”
After the U.S. leg of the Eras tour concludes on August 9, Swift will take the show to Mexico and Brazil by the end of 2023, and Japan, Australia, Singapore, Poland, and Austria in 2024.
