Taylor Swift gave scorcher of a speech at this event yesterday as part of her Artist of the Decade honor. Some of it is a little defensive — she frames everything she’s done as an in-your-face chess move to her detractors, and without having heard it, the reading of it is a touch smug and smarter-than-thou for me — but she also spoke a lot about sexism in the industry, and the notion that people doubted her song-writing bona-fides simply because they couldn’t believe a female artist could cross over to that kind of success. Finally, she called out the whole Scooter Braun incident, wherein he and another guy used private equity to buy up her masters:
“Of course, Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced. I’m fairly certain he knew how I would feel about it, though. Let me just say that the definition of the toxic male privilege in our industry is people saying, ‘Well, he’s always been nice to me’ when I’m raising valid concerns about artists and their rights to own their music. Of course he’s nice to you. If you’re in this room you have something he needs.”
Burn.
