From the massive Eras Tour that crashed the world’s biggest ticketing website to her infamous feuds with other celebrities, Taylor Swift controversies have made the headlines several times. After all, she’s one of the most famous singers of our time, with 14 Grammy awards and hundreds of Guinness World Records.

Since Swift has been involved in private jet controversies, copyright lawsuits, and political issues, most online articles focus on a single topic. Our Business2 Community experts have brought together all controversies and lawsuits, detailing how Swift managed the situations and what the consequences were.

Taylor Swift Controversy – Key Facts

  • Taylor Swift has faced backlash for her private jet use, engaged in celebrity disputes, and publicly criticized platforms like Netflix and Ticketmaster.
  • She was involved in copyright lawsuits, particularly for her song Shake It Off and her book Lover.
  • The controversies have not had an effect on Swift’s popularity, who made the highest-grossing tour of all time with The Eras Tour.

The Story of the Taylor Swift Controversy

There are several controversies about Taylor Swift, including recent ones such as her private jet use and older ones like her feud with Kanye West.

Below is an analysis of her biggest controversies, along with supporting X and Instagram posts:

Private Jet Use Controversy

Arguably the biggest controversy surrounding Taylor Swift is her frequent private jet use, which has drawn substantial criticism for its environmental impact.

Her travels are exposed on the X account @SwiftJetNextDay, run by a college student called Jack Sweeney. His actions are legal as he uses public information to track celebrities’ planes.

According to Newsweek, the singer’s private jets produced 138 tons of CO2 emissions in just three months in 2023, as she visited her boyfriend Travis Kelce and flew between locations for her Eras Tour concerts. For reference, the world average is about four tons of CO2 emissions per year per person, and the US average is 16 tons.

Swift’s unusually high CO2 emissions number created a backlash on social media:

Both Jack Sweeney’s X account and the Newsweek article are from 2023, but that wasn’t the first time Taylor Swift’s private jet use had been put under the spotlight.

In 2022, digital marketing agency Yard analyzed data from the now-suspended X account CelebJets, and found that among all analyzed celebrities, Swift was the biggest polluter in terms of CO2 emissions. Between January and July 2022, her jets spent 22,923 minutes in the air, which accounts for 15.9 days. This was all before The Eras Tour started.

According to the BBC, the singer claims she’s purchased double the carbon offsets needed to cancel the emissions from her Eras concerts.

Brittany Mahomes Controversy

Taylor Swift faced backlash for hugging Brittany Mahomes during the US Open on September 10, 2024. Brittany Mahomes, a soccer player who is married to NFL star Patrick Mahomes, was previously criticized for liking one of Donald Trump’s posts.

Five days before the US Open, Donald Trump had personally thanked Mahomes on his Truth Social account. Below is a screenshot of Trump’s post:

Trump's Truth Social Post in which he thanks Brittany Mahomes for defending him

A Variety op-ed, titled “If Taylor Swift Doesn’t Endorse Kamala Harris, She’d Be Entering a New Era” was published right after Trump’s post and before the US Open. Taylor Swift had been vocal about her political opinions before, endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 elections.

Variety op-ed titled "If Taylor Swift Doesn’t Endorse Kamala Harris, She’d Be Entering a New Era"

On September 11, 2024, Taylor Swift shared on her Instagram account that she would support Kamala Harris in the 2024 US presidential election. Swift addressed concerns about AI images that portrayed her as a Trump supporter, so she highlighted the importance of transparency.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

After the singer endorsed Harris, Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on Truth Social, whipping up another storm of controversy. The presidential candidate was highly criticized for his post, with strategist Ana Navarro-Cárdenas writing “Donald Trump has lost what little sanity he had left. Taylor Swift broke him”. Generally, political pundits agreed that this was a strange (and likely petty) move as Swift is one of the most popular people in the country.

Several media outlets reported that Brittany Mahomes was questioning her support for Trump soon after this fiasco. A source told the Daily Mail that Mahomes was upset about Trump saying he hates Swift. “This deeply bothered Brittany because Taylor is like a sister to her and she has done absolutely nothing wrong,” said the source.

Eras Tour and Ticketmaster Controversy

Tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour went live on Ticketmaster in November 2022, with millions of fans waiting with bated breath to get theirs. However, the website crashed due to high demand, leaving many fans disappointed.

Ticketmaster apologized to Taylor Swift and her fans and published a press release to explain the situation. According to the company’s data, 3.5 million people had pre-registered for the tickets, making it the largest registration in history.

1.5 million people were invited to purchase tickets on the sale day and 2 million were waitlisted. Combined with bot attacks and unregistered fans trying to access the website, Ticketmaster experienced 4x its previous website traffic peaks.

Graph from Ticketmaster showing the average traffic to its website

Taylor Swift released a public statement on Instagram Stories, saying her team had checked in with Ticketmaster several times to see if they’d be able to handle high demand, and the ticket provider reassured them. She also explained the reason why she partnered with the Live Nation-owned platform, “I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.” The statement continued:

It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.

Many fans appreciated her response and piled most of the blame onto TicketMaster.

Kanye West Controversy

Taylor Swift and Kanye West have a long history of controversial interactions.

The starting point is considered to be 2009, when West interrupted Swift’s MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech. He took the microphone and proclaimed that Beyoncé should have won the award. West reportedly apologized, and the two were seen together at several award ceremonies afterward.

However, in 2016, Kanye West released a song called Famous, which included the lyrics: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous”. According to West’s then-wife Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift knew about the lyrics and had approved them beforehand.

However, a day after West’s album release, Taylor Swift made a speech at the Grammys, saying “I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments, or your fame,” which was thought to be directed at West.

The controversy escalated when Kim Kardashian leaked West’s and Swift’s 2016 phone call discussing the Famous lyrics. In a now-deleted post, Taylor Swift explained the situation, with the caption “That moment when Kanye West secretly records your phone call, then Kim posts it on the Internet”.

Below is a screenshot of the deleted post:

Kim Kardashian wrote, “Happy National Snake Day”, causing the hashtag #KimExposedTaylorParty trend.

Taylor Swift came out stronger after the incident. She used a snake theme in her next album, Reputation (2017) as well as the concerts of the 2018 Reputation Stadium Tour.

Social media users admired Taylor Swift’s ability to handle negativity and focus on her music.

Katy Perry Controversy

Katy Perry and Taylor Swift were known to be friends between 2009 and 2014.

However, in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Swift said her song Bad Blood was about another woman in the music industry. This is how she described her relationship with her colleague in the interview:

“For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, ‘Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?’ Then last year, she did something so horrible. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just straight-up enemies.’ And it wasn’t even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational – you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”

Swift did not name names, but people assumed she was talking about Katy Perry, as they had the same dancers on their tours. This hasn’t been confirmed.

In a 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Perry was asked whether she had a reaction to Bad Blood in her new album. “Well that’s not my question to answer — if it’s about me. I think [my new album is] a very empowered record. There is no one thing that’s calling out any one person,” she said. Despite her words, many people interpreted Katy Perry’s Swish Swish as a diss track.

The two reconciled in 2018, when Katy Perry sent a literal olive branch to Taylor Swift’s dressing room.

Big Machine Controversy

In 2018, Taylor Swift signed a new record deal with Republic Records and Universal Music Group. She’d been with Big Machine Records since she was 15.

A year later, Big Machine’s founder, Scott Borchetta, sold the label, including Swift’s masters, to music manager Scooter Braun. Swift publicly expressed her frustration on Tumblr, claiming she had been trying to buy her masters from Borchetta for years. She accused Braun of bullying her in the past and said that from now on, she would own everything she was going to create.

Borchetta replied with a public statement, saying she had been offered ownership of her masters but chose to leave the label for a deal with Universal Music Group.

In another public X post, Taylor Swift shared that Borchetta and Braun had barred her from performing her old songs at the American Music Awards. To be able to perform and use the songs, she would have to re-record all her songs.

Swift ended up re-recording her old work and released them with the note Taylor’s Version.

 

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A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

Taylor Swift Lyrics Controversy

One of Taylor Swift’s 2024 songs, I Hate It Here, has drawn criticism for its lyrics:

My friends used to play a game where we would pick a decade, we wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid.

Some people found the lyrics inappropriate, others questioned what was special about the 1830s:

@brandongonezshow

The internet is calling out Taylor Swift because she said she would rather live in the 1830s without all the racists. Do you think her lyrics are tone-deaf or are people just overreacting?  #taylorswift #torturedpoetsalbum #controversy 

♬ original sound – The Brandon Gonez Show

Previously, singer John Mayer, who dated Taylor Swift in 2010, had raised concerns about Swift’s music. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said he was humiliated by the song Dear John, which was supposedly about him.

“I will say as a songwriter that I think it’s kind of cheap songwriting. I know she’s the biggest thing in the world, and I’m not trying to sink anybody’s ship, but I think it’s abusing your talent to rub your hands together and go, ‘Wait till he gets a load of this!’ That’s bullshit,” he said.

In 2023, as she was about to play Dear John, Swift indirectly asked her fans not to attack Mayer. Dear John was a part of Swift’s album Speak Now, which she re-recorded as a part of her deal with Big Machine.

@etalkctv

Taylor Swift reminded her fans to practice kindness before playing ‘Dear John’ at Eras Tour concert in Minneapolis and explained why she is re-recording her albums. 🎤✨ Keep watching to see hear Taylor had to say!🫶 (🎥: TT/ swiftie4life) #TaylorSwift #DearJohn #ErasTour #Swiftie

♬ original sound – etalk

Ginny & Georgia Controversy

Taylor Swift called out the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia for the punchline: “You go through men faster than Taylor Swift”.

“Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard-working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY,” she wrote on X.

Besides Ginny & Georgia, the artist also criticized Netflix, as the platform previously released Miss Americana, a 2020 documentary about Swift.

Many fans defended Swift, asking the show creators and Netflix to apologize. “Respect Taylor Swift” trended on Twitter, now known as X.

In an interview with Business Insider, the show’s creator Sarah Lampert said she was a big fan of Taylor Swift, and that the characters on the show were meant to be messy. “We write them to be flawed and to purposefully not say the right thing and to act out of emotion,” she said.

Folklore Controversy

In 2020, Amira Rasool, owner of ecommerce platform The Folklore, accused Taylor Swift of stealing her company’s logo.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Amira Rasool (@amirarasool)

A few days after her initial post, Rasool shared that Taylor Swift’s team took action and changed the design. “I commend Taylor’s team for recognizing the damage the merchandise caused to my company The Folklore’s brand. I recognize that she has been a strong advocate for women protecting their creative rights, so it was good to see her team is on the same page,” she posted.

Taylor Swift’s Lawsuits

Taylor Swift has been involved in several lawsuits and legal disputes, so it makes sense to take a look at them separately:

Shake It Off Lawsuit

In 2017, songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler filed a plagiarism lawsuit against Taylor Swift. The plaintiffs argued that Swift stole the lyrics of her hit song Shake It Off from their 2001 song, Playas Gon’ Play by a group called 3LW.

The 2001 song has the lines, “Playas, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate.” Swift’s song goes “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”.

Swift said in her court filing, “Until learning about Plaintiffs’ claim in 2017, I had never heard the song ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW,” and restated that she wrote Shake It Off entirely by herself. Her lawyers argued that the phrases “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” were widely used in pop culture.

In 2022, Hall and Butler dropped the lawsuit, so Swift was able to release a “Taylor’s Version” of Shake It Off.

Lover Lawsuit

Taylor Swift released her seventh studio album Lover in 2019, along with a special edition book including piano and voice with guitar chord frames.

Taylor Swift - Lover book cover

In 2022, a woman named Teresa La Dart filed a copyright lawsuit against Swift, saying the pop star stole “a number of creative elements” from her 2010 book, also called Lover.

According to La Dart’s lawsuit, the book stole the following elements from her:

  • Pastel pinks and blues
  • An image of the author photographed in a downward pose
  • The overall format, which is “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components”

Swift’s lawyers asked the federal judge to dismiss the case, saying it was “legally and factually baseless”. They also said La Dart mentioned a generic design format that’s not subject to copyright protection.

La Dart dropped the lawsuit in 2023.

Jack Sweeney Letters

Jack Sweeney, the Florida college student who runs the Taylor Swift private jet tracking account, received a cease-and-desist letter from Swift’s lawyers in December 2023.

The lawyers argued that the posts could endanger Swift by giving away her location information to stalkers and individuals with harmful intentions.

In response, Sweeney’s attorney, Ethan Jacobs, said the posts were based on publicly available information (which is true) and did not violate any of Swift’s legal rights. “Billionaires – even people as beloved as Swift – use empty legal threats to try to conceal their conduct. But what Mr. Sweeney is doing uses public information and is not unlawful in any way,” told Jacobs to CBS News.

Sweeney posted his attorney’s response on X, with the caption “Look What You Made Me Do”, which is also the name of a 2017 Taylor Swift song:

DJ David Mueller Lawsuit

Taylor Swift accused DJ David Mueller of groping her in a concert in 2013.

In 2015, Mueller sued Taylor Swift for $3 million, saying he was wrongfully terminated because of the accusations. As a result, Swift countersued Mueller for assault and battery. She won the case in 2017.

“My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves,” she said.

What Can We Learn From the Taylor Swift Controversies?

There are common themes in how Taylor Swift resolves controversies: she takes quick action, puts her fans first, and shares her thoughts openly.

Whether you’re facing public scrutiny or navigating internal challenges in your business, Swift’s actions can translate into valuable lessons:

  • Be resilient: Taylor Swift’s infamous feud with Kanye West could have overshadowed her career – the VMA incident was in 2009, only five years after Swift signed with Big Machine Records as a country singer. Instead, she focused on her career and released best-selling album after best-selling album. Even when West’s then-wife Kim Kardashian exposed Swift’s private phone calls and called her a snake, she remained composed. Swift made a smart business move, owning the snake imagery and using it in her next album, Reputation. For businesses, this highlights a key lesson: you can turn adversity into an advantage.
  • Put your audience first: When Ticketmaster failed to manage ticket sales for Swift’s Eras Tour, she openly addressed the issue in her Instagram Stories. Her announcement clearly explained why she chose Ticketmaster and how sorry she was that many fans weren’t able to buy tickets. It’s no coincidence that Swift’s fans adore her — she interacts with them and communicates transparently. Change “fans” to “audience” and you have a business principle that applies to virtually any industry. Transparency helps build trust, especially during times of crisis.
  • Take quick action: In the Folklore logo controversy, Swift’s team addressed claims of copyright infringement and changed the logo design. Rapid response can protect your brand — which is especially important if your brand revolves around relatability and honesty, like Taylor Swift’s.
  • Surround yourself with a good team: From defending herself against the Shake It Off plagiarism lawsuit to standing firm against the Lover book claims, Swift’s lawyers protected her. Whether it’s legal advisors, marketing experts, or operations specialists, a strong team helps business owners handle challenges more efficiently.

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