Despite all the drama, Taylor Swift's American Music Awards performance was pretty straightforward
The year is wrapping up, but the biggest story of 2019 is definitely the feud between Taylor Swift and her old record label Big Machine, which has been going on for… 10 days? That’s it? Well, anyway, part of the feud was that Swift had accused Big Machine—and new owner Scooter Braun, who has a history of pissing off Swift—of trying to stop her from performing a big medley of her old hits at the American Music Awards, where Swift was to be presented with the Artist Of The Decade award. Big Machine tried to deny it and then explained that Swift was allowed to perform whatever she wanted (but even that was pointlessly confusing).
Finally, our surprisingly brief nightmare ended tonight when Swift took the stage at the AMAs to perform her big medley of hits, with everyone waiting on the edge of their seats to see if she’d make some big statement about artists’ rights or whatever. As it turned out, though, she just did a big medley of her hits. It was kind of anti-climactic, at least for anyone hoping for some Taylor Swift drama. If you just wanted to hear some Taylor Swift music, it did the job.
The full version hasn’t been released online yet, but here’s Swift with Halsey and Camila Cabello singing “Shake It Off”:
And Swift singing “Lover” for Misty Copeland and Craig Hall:
And while we’re here, how about Carole King presenting Swift with the award?
A cynical person might try to argue that this was all manufactured to generate interest in Swift’s performance, but the AMAs aren’t nearly big enough to justify an annoyingly massive conspiracy like that. So, let’s just trust that all of the controversy was legitimate and move on with our lives.