Taylor Swift urged her fans to "nurture" their passions and hobbies in a poignant speech at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards on Thursday night.
Amid the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu presented the music superstar with Artist of the Year and six other prizes, including Album of the Year for The Life of a Showgirl and Pop Song of the Year for The Fate of Ophelia.
Addressing the crowd, Taylor reflected on the importance of honing a craft or hobby.
"To be receiving Artist of the Year.... I love being an artist," she began. "I love writing songs more than anything in the world, and I didn't think I was an artist when I first started doing it."
Taylor went on to recall how she used to rush home from school to write songs and play guitar when she was a pre-teen.
"I just wanna say, like when I was 12 years old, I had the luxury of spending thousands of hours working at my craft, practising making mistakes through trial and error, and that was all completely unobserved, right? So, that was just me and my craft," the 36-year-old recalled. "I'm looking out into this crowd, and I'm seeing so many ambitious, cool, smart, awesome people who have dreams, and 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. Everything you post, you get feedback, whether it's good or bad or whatever."
Elsewhere in her speech, the Opalite hitmaker encouraged her fans to pursue their passions.
"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," she added. "I'm a firm believer that anything you feed your mind, it will internalise. Anything you feed the Internet, it will attempt to kill, and I don't want that for your dreams. 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."
Other big winners on the night included Alex Warren, who nabbed Song of the Year for Ordinary, and Sabrina Carpenter, who was named Pop Artist of the Year.
