Taylor Swift is leaving her 20s behind with a bang! The megastar accepted Billboard’s Woman Of The Decade Award on Thursday night, where she delivered a powerful 15-minute speech that addressed everything from the challenges women in the industry face to her public feud with Scooter Braun.
Taylor accepted the award on the eve of her 30th birthday, a symbolic moment as the award honored the work she made in her 20s. Taylor noted this in her speech, which she began with a question to the audience: “What does it mean to be the woman of this decade?”
Taylor went on to answer her own question. “It means I’ve seen a lot,” the singer began. She soon turned to the main focus of her speech. “I saw that as a female in this industry some people will always have slight reservations about you. Whether you deserve to be there. Whether your male producer or male cowriter is the reason for your success. Or whether it was a savvy record label,” Taylor said, the first time she seemingly addressed Scooter Braun’s purchase of her music catalogue. “It wasn’t,” she added.
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But the “Lover” singer said these doubts were what turned her into the artist she is today. “This was the decade where I became a mirror for my detractors. Whatever they decided I couldn’t do is exactly what I did.”
And that is most certainly true. During Taylor’s 20s she released five albums across multiple genres, broke her own record for highest-grossing domestic tour by a woman, and became the most-awarded female nominee in American Music Award history—to name just a few successes. Taylor said that she is not alone in these successes, and women in the music industry thrive because they have to work so hard to get equal opportunities as their male counterparts.
“In the last 10 years I have watched as women in this industry are criticized and measured up to each other and picked at for their bodies, their romantic lives, their fashion,” Taylor said. “So why are we doing so well?” she continued later. “Because we have to grow fast. We have to work this hard. We have to prove that we deserve this. We have to top our last achievements… It seems like the pressure that could have crushed us made us into diamonds instead. And what didn’t kill us actually did make us stronger.”
Before long, Taylor turned her attention to the drama between her and Scooter Braun, whose purchase of the masters of her first six albums has created a lengthy and public feud between the singer and Big Machine Records.
“After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalogue was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros Family, 23 Capital and the Carlyle Group,” the popstar said. The she took on Scooter personally.
“Of course, Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced,” she said. “I’m fairly certain he knew how I would feel about it, though. Let me just say that the definition of the toxic male privilege in our industry is people saying, ‘Well, he’s always been nice to me’ when I’m raising valid concerns about artists and their rights to own their music. Of course he’s nice to you. If you’re in this room you have something he needs.”
Taylor ended her speech by saying in the next decade she plans on doing “whatever the hell I want.”
Happy 30th Birthday, Taylor—we know you’ll keep slaying in the next decade!
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