As Australia turned towards the ARIA Awards ceremony last night, Taylor Swift was half a world away, celebrating her own personal victories. We don’t just mean her gong for Best International Artist, either: yesterday, Swift’s YouTube channel shared footage of her 11-minute-long American Music Awards medley for the first time, giving overseas fans a glimpse at one of the most controversial career retrospectives in recent memory.
To cut a long, long story short, Swift was honoured at the November 24 event with the Artist of the Decade Award. To celebrate the win, the pop gun planned to perform a big ol’ medley performance of her past and present hits, which makes a whole lot of sense.
But a couple of weeks ago, Swift alleged that her one-time label boss Scott Borchetta and industry figure Scooter Braun, who acquired the rights to Swift’s back-catalogue this year, tried to place undue restrictions on her performance. Swift hit back with a letter to her fans, saying “This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in writing these songs.”
Borchetta and Braun eventually relented on those conditions, allowing Swift to belt out her hits alongside Camilla Cabello, Halsey, and a slew of extremely good dancers. It’s worth a peek, if only to see what eleven minutes of “get stuffed” looks like:
