Taylor Swift made her first big speech in months at the Teen Choice Awards tonight. The singer accepted the first-ever Icons award, and in her speech, she addressed gender pay equality, spoke about accepting that everyone makes mistakes, and shared she has a new song coming Friday, “Lover.”
Here, her full speech:
Okay, all right, okay, we have a lot to talk about. Whoa, but first I want to talk about Alex Morgan. The fact that she’s here presenting this to me is such an honor. Not only winning the World Cup with her amazing teammates, right? But while they were winning the World Cup, they were also taking a historic stand in terms of gender equality, gender pay gap. Please, please, please support her and her teammates because this isn’t over yet. It’s not resolved. Get online and talk about it. Let people know how you feel about it because what happened to them is unfair; it’s happening everywhere and they are heroes and icons for standing up.
Second of all, I want to just shout out whoever it was at the Teen Choice Awards who decided to put the itty bitty kitty committee on this surf board. These are my furry children and this is like a really proud moment for me that they’re on a Teen Choice Award. It’s just so meow and I’m really having a proud moment. Aesthetically speaking, this may be my favorite award, I’m just saying.
So I just want to talk to the fans for a second. You make me so happy. You make me laugh everyday online. I love meeting you. I love loving you. You are just the most generous, amazing people. Thank you for giving me the life I have. Every single minute of every single day, I know you’re the reason I have the life I have and I get to do what I love doing. Teen Choice Awards, if anyone’s a teen out there—which it checks out—I think one thing I wish I would’ve known as a teen is mistakes are inevitable, like—screaming, that’s good, it’s nice—I think sometimes you think if you try hard enough to make every decision perfectly, you think you can possibly ace life and never make any mistakes but it’s normal to make mistakes. I just want you to know if you’re out there and you’re being really hard on yourself right now for something that’s happened or for messing up or feeling embarrassed, it’s normal. That’s what’s going to happen to you in life. No one gets through unscathed. We’re all going to have a few scratches on us. So just please, please, we live in an insane world and in an insane time. Please be kind to yourself and please stand up for yourself. Please.
Also I just wanted to tell you there’s so much I’m excited about in the next 12 days until my album Lover comes out. The album comes out on August 23, but I wanted to tell you tonight that on the 16th, on Friday, I have a new song called “Lover” coming out, and I’m so excited. I love you more than words can say. Thank you for this amazing honor. I love you guys so much.
In addition to the Icon Award, Swift is nominated for seven additional awards tonight: Choice Female Artist, Choice Single: Female Artist (“ME!”), Choice Summer Music Star: Female, Choice Summer Song (“You Need to Calm Down”), Choice Fandom, Choice Pop Song (“ME!”), and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Social Star.