Phoebe Bridgers Can’t Shop Gushing Over Taylor Swift at the iHeartRadio Music Awards: Read Her Full Speech

Phoebe Bridgers was on hand Monday night to present Taylor Swift with the 2023 Innovators Award at the iHeart Radio Music Awards. Before Swift took to the stage to accept the award, Bridgers delivered a touching speech about the impact that the “Anti-Hero” singer has had on her own career as a singer/songwriter.

Bridgers is opening for Swift on the Eras tour starting in May for a total of 12 stops. She is also releasing a new boygenius album, The Record, with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, later this week, featuring a song called “We’re In Love,” which references Swfit’s re-recorded “This Love.”

Read Bridger’s full speech for Swift below:

When I was little, I wanted to be a songwriter. I had lots of big feelings, and I wanted to write songs about them. But songs were written by adults about their very adult lives. So when I started writing, I just made stuff up. And the songs sucked. I knew that, and I fantasized about the day far in the future when I’d finally have something to say — when I lived a life worth writing a song about. Then, one day, I was listening to country radio with my mom — my mom’s here — and Taylor came on.

I heard a girl, not much older than me, sing a song she had written about her own life. And the song was really good. As I grew up, so did Taylor, and so did her songs. Gradually, my songs started to suck less because instead of trying to sound interesting, I just started telling the truth. Taylor has always told the truth. She’s written songs from exactly where she is. Her music shifted genre in the same way life does — in the same way being 16 is totally incomparable to being 18, 22, 25, 28.

I’m grateful to have grown up in a world with Taylor Swift in it, or, ‘The World: Taylor’s Version.’

Phoebe Bridgers introduzindo Taylor Swift para o Innovator Award no #iHeartAwards pic.twitter.com/IIGtOV8WUH

— Phoebe Bridgers Brasil (@pbridgersbrasil) March 28, 2023