If you haven’t been following the week-long social media battle between Taylor Swift and her former record label, her performance at the American Music Awards on Sunday night won’t tell you much. Performing a medley of six hits, spanning from 2008’s “Love Story” to her latest single “The Man,” Swift made no reference to what she claimed was an effort by Big Machine to prevent her from performing any of her old music during the show. Maybe opening with “The Man” was a nod to the two men, Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun, she named in her tweet last week.
Instead, the performance introduced by Carole King and capped by Swift’s rendition of ”Lover” at a piano in a pink robe was lighthearted and triumphant. “That performance was even more fun than I hoped it would be,” she said in a speech after King gave her the glass obelisk. In both the speech and the performance she avoided overt reference to the battle that erupted between her, Big Machine’s head Borchetta, and Braun, who purchased Big Machine through his company, Ithaca Holdings, and thus owns the rights to all of Swift’s pre-2019 recordings.
In a gold sequin leotard, she went through some of her biggest hits in a mostly-chronological procession. She started with “The Man” before transitioning quickly into “Love Song” from 2008’s Fearless. Next came “I Knew You Were Trouble” from 2012’s Red, in a slightly darker and more dance-based remix than its radio version. “Blank Space” from 2014’s 1989, which the AMA introduction noted spent its first year in the number one slot on the Billboard 200 album charts, before a quick transition into that album’s lead single, “Shake It Off,” with Halsey and Camila Cabello singing backup. She took a perch at a piano to sing “Lover” with an orchestral accompaniment while ballet dancers Misty Copeland and Craig Hall occupied center stage.
The performance came at the end of about five months of public acrimony from Swift regarding her business relationships with Borchetta and Braun. In November 2018, when Swift announced that she was leaving her longtime label Big Machine, it came after closed-door negotiations and was announced with little fanfare. Months later, the pop star announced that she had signed with the Universal Music Group imprint Republic Records after a failed negotiation with Borchetta over a contract that would have given Swift back the ownership to her master recordings.
“All any of the artists or all the people in this room want to do is create something that lasts,” Swift said at the end of her speech. Though she left the specifics offstage at the award ceremony, the performance was evidence that she’s made a lot of music over the last 13 years, and she remains in control of it where she can: onstage.
Update (11:00 p.m.): Swift was given the Artist of the Year award for the fifth time and gave a longer speech to accept the award. In these remarks, she addressed difficulties in her life but did not go into specifics. “In the last year, I’ve have some of the most amazing times, and some of the hardest things I’ve gone through in my life, and a lot of things that have not been public,” she said. “This year has been a lot. It’s been a lot of good, it’s been a lot of really complicated”
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