Taylor Swift Warns Against ‘Immediate Feedback’ on the Internet During Her 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards Speech
4 min readTHE RUNDOWN
- Taylor Swift accepted the Artist of the Year award at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards, and used her speech time to give advice to other artists.
- The singer had nine nominations going into the ceremony.
- In her speech, she noted that “we live in this world where there’s so much immediate feedback constantly” and recommended artists give themselves “time to hone your craft.”
As she accepted the award for Artist of the Year at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards tonight, Taylor Swift chose not to further spotlight her hit album The Life of a Showgirl but, instead, offered some revealing advice to emerging artists. Perhaps her most poetic quote of the night soon followed: “I’m a firm believer that anything you feed your mind, it will internalize,” she told the crowd. “Anything you feed the internet, it will attempt to kill. And I don’t want that for your dreams.”
Swift arrived at the ceremony this evening with nine nominations, and by the time she took the stage for her Artist of the Year honor, she had won six awards total, including Pop Album of the Year, Pop Song of the Year, Best Lyrics, Best Music Video, and Favorite Tour Style. Earlier in the evening, the singer celebrated her Pop Album of the Year honor with a brief speech thanking her fans and her fiancé, Travis Kelce, who attended the awards show by her side.
Swift took more time with her Artist of the Year speech. She opened, first, by thanking presenter Alysia Liu, whom Swift said she was “so inspired” to watch perform during the 2026 Winter Olympics.
She then shifted her approach, offering a nostalgic anecdote about her youth, during which she spent “thousands of hours working at my craft, practicing, making mistakes through trial and error.” She gestured to the audience and added, “And I’m looking out into this crowd, and I’m seeing so many ambitious, cool, smart, awesome people who have dreams.” The “Fate of Ophelia” singer specifically called out the toxic “immediate feedback” inherent to the modern internet, with social media having exploded since Swift’s career began in the early 2000s. “If I had one hope for you,” she said, “I would say that I hope that you get to nurture your hobby and your passion just between you and that craft.”
Read Swift’s full acceptance speech below:
“I just want to say, first of all, to receive this award from Alysa [Liu]—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 work and effort and love you have for what you do.
To be receiving Artist of the Year, which is—I love being an artist. 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. 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 was 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 that was all completely unobserved, right? So that was just me and my craft.
And I’m looking out into this crowd, and I’m seeing so many ambitious, cool, smart, awesome people who have dreams. We live in this world where there’s so much immediate feedback constantly. 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. I just want to say, 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 some 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 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 night.”