Why Taylor Swift Skipped the 2021 MTV VMAs

Taylor Swift opted to skip attending the MTV VMAs in person tonight despite her multiple nominations. Swift is up for four awards tonight in the MTV VMAs' Artist of the Year, Best Pop Song, Best Direction (for her “willow” music video, which Swift directed), and Best Art Direction categories.

While Swift's exact whereabouts tonight are not known, the singer was recently seen in Northern Ireland, where her boyfriend Joe Alwyn is shooting Conversations with Friends.

While Swift and Alwyn have never walked a red carpet together, Swift gave Alwyn a shoutout in her Grammys 2021 speech back in March. It was one of her most direct tributes to her longtime partner.

“Joe, who is the first person that I play every single song that I write, and I had the best time writing songs with you in quarantine,” she said to her boyfriend during her acceptance speech for Album of the Year. (Alwyn wrote songs for folklore under the pseudonym William Bowery.) “I want to thank—I want to thank James, Inez, and Betty and their parents [Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds] who are the second and third people that I play every new song that I write but mostly, we just want to thank the fans. You guys met us in this imaginary world that we created, and we can’t tell you how honored we are forever by this. Thank you so much, and thank you to the Recording Academy. We will never forget that you did this for us. Thank you so much.”

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