Taylor Swift’s 16 Best Awards Show Speeches
Taylor Swift is a musical legend, and the awards she has racked up over the years more than prove it.
The singer moved to Nashville at age 14 with dreams of hitting it big in country music. She became a breakout artist with her 2006 self-тιтled debut album, and her star only continued to rise as she released her follow-up records — 2008’s Fearless, 2010’s Speak Now, 2012’s Red, 2014’s 1989, 2017’s Reputation, 2019’s Lover and 2020’s Folklore and Evermore — and ventured into pop, dominating the industry every step of the way.
Swift’s musical acumen has helped her land eight No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including “Blank Space,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version).” It has also propelled 10 of her albums — such as Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), the 2021 re-recordings of her earlier material — to the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Her work consistently resonates with fans, thanks to her knack for songwriting and evoking universal emotions.
The icon has been rewarded time and again for her trailblazing success, earning 11 Grammys, 29 Billboard Music Awards, 12 CMA Awards, eight ACM Awards and many more accolades. Swift is just as articulate in her acceptance speeches as she is in her lyrics. While she once inspired memes for her energetic reactions at awards shows, in recent years Swift has used her platform to share timely statements and speak her mind while still remaining humble and grateful. Below is a roundup of the musician’s greatest awards show speeches of all time.
2010 Grammys
Award: Album of the year for Fearless
Best moment: “This is the story all of us when we’re 80 years old and we are telling the same stories over and over again to our grandkids and they’re so annoyed with us, this is the story we’re gonna be telling over and over again — in 2010 that we got to win album of the year at the Grammys.”
2009 CMA Awards
Best moment: “I will never forget this moment because in this moment, everything that I have ever wanted has just happened to me.” Watch here.
2019 American Music Awards
Award: Artist of the decade
Best moment: “I cannot believe that it’s Carole King — it’s you — who gave me this award. My parents are here tonight, and they would listen to Tapestry and all your other records in high school and then they took those records with them, packed them up in boxes, took them to college with them. Then when they met and they got their own house, they took those records with them there, and then when they had my brother and I, they played those records for us. And I just remember when I fell in love with music, it was right around the time I realized how marvelous it was that an artist could transcend so many different phases and changes in people’s lives so you taught me that that’s a possibility.”
2016 Grammys
Award: Best pop vocal album for 1989
Best moment: [Accepting via phone] “Is James Taylor there? Can you tell James Taylor I love him? Can somebody who knows James Taylor tell him I love him?”
2019 MTV Video Music Awards
Award: Video of the year for “You Need to Calm Down”
Best moment: “You voting for this video means that you want a world where we’re all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify.”
2013 MTV Video Music Awards
Award: Best female video for “I Knew You Were Trouble”
Best moment: “I also want to thank the person who inspired this song who knows exactly who he is because now I got one of these [VMAs].”
2018 American Music Awards
Award: Artist of the year
Best moment: “This award and every single award given out tonight were voted on by the people, and you know what else is voted on by the people is the midterm elections.”
