Why do you have to be so mean?
Zach Bryan insulted Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Travis Kelce on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday while allegedly drunk.
First, the 28-year-old country singer tweeted “Eagles > Chiefs,” referring to Kelce’s NFL team.
Bryan then took sides in the years-long rivalry between Swift and Kanye West, tweeting: “Kanye > Taylor.”
“Who’s in?” he concluded his post.
Unsurprisingly, Bryan immediately faced strong reactions from Swift’s huge fan base.
On Wednesday, he deleted his X account and apologized in his Instagram stories.
“For the record guys, I didn’t come for Taylor the other day,” Bryan wrote alongside a screenshot of Taylor and Post Malone’s song “Fortnight.”
“I compared two records while drunk and it came out wrong,” he continued. “I know there are a lot of things floating around Ye and I was speaking purely musically. I love Taylor’s music and pray you know that I’m human and I tweet stupid things a lot. Hopefully one day I can explain that to her.”
Bryan added, “I get in trouble too much on Twitter and I would say it’s best if I stay away from it. I’m sorry to any Taylor fans I’ve upset or disappointed. I love you guys and I’m doing my best!”
On his next slide, which showed a screenshot of Swift’s song “The Albatross,” Bryan explained that he was “going through a rough time in his life” and was “projecting” when he tweeted about Swift.
“It just came across as rude and desensitized to Taylor,” the “Sun to Me” singer continued. “I respect her so much as a musician that the last thing I want is for people to think I don’t appreciate and love what she’s done for music.”
He concluded his message by saying, “Don’t drink while you tweet!”
Bryan published a third post about Swift, calling the 14-time Grammy winner “a force of nature since we were growing up.”
“I admire this. I’m going to listen to this record now,” he wrote, adding a screenshot of Swift’s song “Castles Crumbling,” which also features Paramore lead singer Hayley Williams.
“I don’t want people to ever think that I’m even remotely evil or mean to anyone. That’s why I’m saying all this,” Bryan added.
As Bryan hinted, Swift and West, 47, have been enemies since 2009, when Ye jumped on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards during Swift’s acceptance speech and declared that Beyoncé had made “one of the best videos ever.”
In 2016, West mentioned Swift in his song “Famous.”
Swift claimed she was unaware of the song’s line “I made that b—h famous.” West’s then-wife Kim Kardashian seemingly posted the entire conversation on her Snapchat, which seemed to incriminate Swift.
In 2020, the true version of the call was leaked online by an unknown party, exonerating Swift.
“It’s a completely staged plot involving an illegally recorded phone call that Kim Kardashian edited and then released to tell everyone I’m a liar,” Swift told Time magazine about the incident after she was named Person of the Year 2023.
She described the drama with West as one of the “most horrible things that has ever happened to her.”
