All Billboard was seemingly trying to do was honor Taylor Swift, but the website/magazine/chart-maker mangled it. In fact, they did quite the opposite of honoring the pop star; they disrespected her. And, likely, personally insulted her. Swift might not ever say much about the situation, though; she will let Swifties do the talking.
First, there was the issue with Swift being ranked second on Billboard's list of Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. Fair enough. That is opinion, and one or a group of ones have a right to that, whether that opinion is correct or not (in Billboard's opinion of Swift, the opinion is not correct).
As part of Billboard's video ranking Swift second, though, the chart-maker added a brief clip of Kanye West's song, "Famous," in which a wax figure of Swift without clothes on. West and Swift have also had a spat about a reported taped phone conversation in which West asked permission to use Swift's name for the song and Swift said no. West used it anyway.
Billboard rightfully apologizes to Taylor Swift for callous disrespect
That Billboard would use anything to do with West in relation to Swift is a reach, but especially a clip of the video from that song. Whoever was in charge of the Swift video for Billboard's "honor" should likely have a stern talking to, if not altogether losing their job. If one of us were to do something comparatively speaking in our own jobs, we might be terminated.
Billboard did issue an apology for using West's song in the Swift video, at least. This was only after many Swifties took to social media to spew their anger at Billboard and created the hashtags #BillboardIsOverParty and #BillboardApologizeToTaylor.
We are deeply sorry to Taylor Swift and all of our readers and viewers that in a video celebrating Swift’s achievements, we included a clip that falsely depicted her. We have removed the clip from our video and sincerely regret the harm we caused with this error.
— billboard (@billboard) November 28, 2024
Seeing their mistake and facing the wrath of Swifties, the website an apology that said, "We are deeply sorry to Taylor Swift and all of our readers and viewers that in a video celebrating Swift’s achievements, we included a clip that falsely depicted her. We have removed the clip from our video and sincerely regret the harm we caused with this error."
As rightfully pointed out by Taylor Swift fans on social media, though, what Billboard did was not truly an "error." That would imply something accidental happened. Instead, someone was in charge of putting together the video, some edited the video, and some greenlit the video. There were probably many steps along the way where Billboard could have said, "Hold up a second." That did not happen, and using West to honor Swift seems callous and extremely poor judgment.