Taylor Swift at the American Music Awards

The 47th annual American Music Awards were held Sunday night at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Though awards were handed to new stars like Post Malone, Billie Eilish and Halsey, the show gave plenty of screen time to comparative veterans like Kesha, the Jonas Brothers and Toni Braxton. Here are five of the event’s notable moments.

Taylor Swift has been involved in a very public feud with Scott Borchetta, the founder of her former label, Big Machine, and Scooter Braun, the executive who purchased it (and acquired the bulk of her hugely successful catalog). She wrote a post on Tumblr earlier this month to say the two men were preventing her from performing any of the songs from her first six albums on the AMAs, a claim that Big Machine denied.

Swift brought her concerns to national TV at the show, dressed in a white shirt imprinted with the names of the six albums she no longer owns: “Speak Now” was given top

billing on the front, “Fearless” on the back. Her performance started sternly with the chorus of “The Man,” a song from her most recent album, “Lover,” that’s explicitly about sexist double standards. Then came a spill of hits from her Big Machine catalog: “Love Story” from 2008, “I Knew You Were Trouble” from 2012 and “Blank Space” from 2014. Camila Cabello and Halsey joined her for “Shake It Off,” trading lines and performing choreographed shake-shake-shake routines. Swift closed behind a piano for a soaring version of “Lover,” accompanied by the spins of the ballet stars Misty Copeland and Craig Hall.

Swift never explicitly referenced Braun and Borchetta, but accepting her final award of the night, she addressed a year of challenges: “This year for me has been a lot. It’s been a lot of good, it’s been a lot of really complicated, and so on behalf of my family and me, thank you so much for being there and for caring.”

 

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES