A magnanimous move or a comically overwrought publicity stunt? That's the question being asked in the wake of Taylor Swift's performance Sunday night at the MTV Video Music Awards, where she debuted "Innocent," a song dedicated to Kanye "I'mma Let You Finish" West, who, as we all remember, interrupted her acceptance speech at last year's show.
Taylor Swift
(©AP)
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The doll-faced popster, sporting dramatic makeup, emotionally evocative bare feet and an angelic white dress, belted out her new ditty after a quick replay of Kanye's onstage award-jacking.
"It's okay, life is a tough crowd,
Thirty-two and still growing up now...
Time turns flames to embers,
You'll have new Septembers,
Every one of us has messed up, too (ohh),
Minds change like the weather,
I hope you remember,
Today is never too late,
To be brand new (ohhhhhh)
It's all right, just wait and see,
Your string of lights are bright to me (oh!),
Who you are is not where you've been,
You're still an innocent"
Watch: See part of Taylor's song
While the performance would have earned a, "It was a little pitchy, dawg," from Randy Jackson, there was no doubting Swift's earnestness: She wants everyone to know she has graciously forgiven West for ruining her big moment (granted, she was collecting a VMA, not, say, a Pulitzer or even a Teen Choice award. Plus, the incident did give her career a boost, but regardless ...).
The critics, however, were not quite ready to let bygones be bygones.
"Ridiculous" and "pathetic," declared Gawker. "Our eyes have never rolled so hard," opined Zap2it.
Photos: 2010 VMA red-carpet gallery
NPR was equally unimpressed with the ditty, calling it "unintentionally uproarious."
That, it turns out, was the nice part of the review: "The spectacle of an insanely wealthy 20-year-old singer using the phrase 'who you are is not what you did' to describe not a reformed criminal or a family member who grievously erred and must be forgiven, but to describe someone she doesn't really know whose only misdeed is rudeness at an awards show is just jaw-droppingly self-involved, and adding 'you're still an innocent,' with its implications of purity, borders on the creepy."
More: 2010 MTV VMAs | List of winners
But Taylor still has her fans. Entertainment Weekly found the tune "genuinely heartfelt," while Salon called it "a model of pure class."
Kanye, meanwhile, had his own self-referential moment at the end of the show with his song "Runaway," which included the thoughtful lyrics, "I always find something wrong/You've been putting up with my s--- way too long ... Let's have a toast for the d-----bags/Let's have a toast for the a------s/Let's have a toast for the scumbags/Every one of them that I know/Let's have a toast for the jerk---s ... Baby, I got a plan/Run away fast as you can."
Which apparently isn't what happened when West met up with Swift before the VMAs kicked off.
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"Kanye got word she was going to do the song about him and wanted to talk it out," a source tells Us Weekly of the apparent tête-à-tête, which reportedly took place in Swift's dressing room. "Taylor felt bad. They talked and everything is good between them now. But they promised to keep what they spoke about between them."
Earlier in the day, Kanye tweeted that he knew his beloved mother was looking down on him from heaven: "I want to make her so happy today."
Sure, that's a nice thought. But we're guessing that from whatever cloud she was floating on, his mom was saying, "Enough already. Can we all just move on from this now? I have better things to do, like get ready for my hot date with Rudolph Valentino."