Taylor Swift at the 2019 American Music Awards: Of Course That Dress Shirt Was a Statement!
Ahead of the 2019 American Music Awards, Taylor Swift feud with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta -- the new owner and founder, respectively, of her former record label, Big Machine Label Group -- was in the headlines, and many expected her to use her Sunday night (Nov. 24) stage time to address the drama. Swift did just that, but in a way that was perhaps more subtle than expected.
During Swift's AMAs Artist of the Decade segment, she opened her performance medley wearing a men's dress shirt emblazoned with the titles of her first six albums -- all of the records she released while on Big Machine. Especially prominently placed were two telling titles: "Speak Now" across her chest and "Fearless" across her back.
Swift wore the dress shirt as she opened her medley with a few bars of "The Man," an album cut from her newest album, Lover. The song's lyrics find Swift reflecting on the imbalance of power between the sexes, and the double standards that women face: "I'm so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man / And I'm so sick of them coming at me again / 'Cause if I was a man, then I'd be the man."
See More Photos From Taylor Swift's AMAs Artist of the Decade Moment
In addition to her AMA Artist of the Decade honor, Swift also won Favorite Pop / Rock Album and Artist of the Year during the 2019 AMAs broadcast. Rather than use her acceptance speech time to speak out about the battle she's been fighting with Borchetta and Braun over control of her master recordings, however, Swift kept her comments on the matter to the first moments of her performance segment, letting her lyrics and her choice of attire do the talking. Still, the message was clear: She's ready to fight.
Since Big Machine Founder and CEO Borchetta sold the record label to celebrity talent manager Scooter Braun over the summer, Swift has been open about her battle for the rights to her old music, accusing Borchetta of not offering her the opportunity to purchase either the label or her masters and claiming that Braun has bullied her. Until Thursday (Nov. 21), Braun remained silent on the matter, but he finally spoke out in a Q&A at an event in California.
Ahead of the 2019 American Music Awards, the country-turned-pop superstar also claimed in a social media post that Borchetta and Braun were refusing to let Swift perform the songs she released while with BMLG during the show. The sides publicly traded words before the record label issued a statement confirming that Swift would be allowed to sing whatever she wanted at the event.
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