The VMA incident converted Swift’s victimhood into superstardom

Evidence

His interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMAs made him a national pariah. “They say I was the abomination of Obama’s nation,” he later rapped. A planned joint tour with Lady Gaga was scrapped amid the fallout. Swift, on the other hand, made the most of her victimization, releasing the song “Innocent” on her next album—a pointed yet ostensibly tender response that veteran music journalist Alison Stewart called “a small masterpiece of passive-aggressiveness.” The incident gave Swift further fuel for her meteoric rise into pop superstardom. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 362