Taylor Swift Accepts The Artist Of The Year Award At The 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards

I just want to say first of all to receive this award from Alyssa who you brought me so much happiness and everyone else so much happiness with your performances and I was so inspired by how much diligence and and work and effort and and love you have for what you do and and to be receiving artists of the year which is I love being an artist I love writing songs more than anything in the world and it I didn't think I was an artist when I first started doing it it was a hobby it was a hobby and then it was my favorite hobby and then it was what I would like rush home from school to do it's like I can't wait to get back to my guitar in my room and write a song and I just want to say like when I was 12 years old I had the luxury of spending thousands of hours working at my craft practicing making mistakes through trial and error and and that was all completely unobserved right so that was just me and my craft and I just I'm looking out into this crowd and I'm seeing so many ambitious cool smart awesome people who have dreams like we live in this world where there's so much immediate feedback constantly like you get feedback for everything you share with the world now like everything you post you get feedback whether it's good or bad or whatever I just want to say if I had if I had one hope for you I would say that I hope that you get to nurture your hobby and your passion just between you and that craft and you give yourself time give yourself time to make mistakes give yourself time to hone your craft I'm a firm believer that anything you feed your mind it will internalize anything you feed the internet it will attempt to kill and I don't want that for your dreams so just thank you for allowing me to turn my hobby into a love into a passion into a dream into a career thank you for allowing me to have it this long and I wish you the best with everything you do thank you so much for this amazing amazing