Taylor Swift: ‘Super-Relieved’ to Pull Out a Victory for the ‘Taylor Swift Award’ at BMI Ceremony

(photos by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for BMI)

“Thank you so much to BMI for giving me the Taylor Swift Award,” said honoree… Taylor Swift. “You know, I’m really super-relieved that BMI decided to give me the Taylor Swift Award,” Taylor Swift added, “because if they had chosen somebody else to give the Taylor Swift Award to, I’d be kind of bummed about it.”

The name of the trophy given to Swift at Tuesday night’s BMI Pop Awards may have become a laughing matter, but the performing rights organization that administers the star’s publishing royalties was quite clear about her place in the firmament, and just how rarely they’ve done or plan to do this sort of thing. The only other time they gave someone an award named after himself, said BMI CEO Mike O’Neill, was with Michael Jackson in 1990. (That prefigured MTV creating the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award to give to Jackson in ’91, so maybe Swift can expect a Moonman named for herself next year, too.)

Usually BMI is content to give one younger songwriter a President’s Award each year. In 2015, it went to P!nk, who may be wondering how she can have hers re-engraved to be a P!nk Award right about now.

The other career achievement award of the night — still and forever called the Icon Award — went to Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the married songwriting team behind “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” which O’Neill mentioned was the most-performed song in the history of BMI. Swift was happy to share the stage with them for two very distinct reasons. “I first wanted to say to Cynthia Weil, to Barry Mann, and to Carole King [a previous Icon honoree also in attendance], you, the Brill Building, your legacy, are the reason we do what we do. Many of us in this room can’t dream of accomplishing what you guys have accomplished.”

And then: “I recently have had a lot of time off. I’ve been watching a lot of reality TV, and Barry and Cynthia’s daughter Jenn [Dr. Jenn Mann] is the couples therapist on a show called Couples Therapy that I watch a lot.”

(President/CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing Nashville Troy Tomlinson, Taylor Swift, and Sony/ATV CEO Martin Bandier)

That time off may not augur well for fans who’ve gotten used to their workaholic heroine going right from a tour finale into intense new album sessions every even-numbered spring, but few will likely begrudge Swift her first extended vacation since she first signed with BMI a dozen years ago.

Among the black-tie crowd, Swift was possibly the only person amid hundreds of attendees to give a standing ovation to all 50 of the rewarded songs. (Her parents and brother joined her in rising on a lot of those.) She was definitely the only person to give a dancing ovation to most of the tunes as they came up for reward.

The graciousness continued during her acceptance speech, as the shout-outs began. “I noticed that a lot of the songs that were awarded tonight, I actually got to sing with the artists on the 1989 world tour, because the artist was generous enough to come out for free and play their song on my stage,” she said. “It was something that made this tour special and different for me, because we live in an age where everybody has the ability to see your show online before they come if they want to. But if you surprise them with a special guest, then they actually get to feel that very unique-in-2016 feeling of being surprised by something. So I would like to go through the list — just ignore the cat stickers on my phone, if you will — of songs that I got to perform with the artists on my tour. I think this is a testament to the writers, what you created, because every single person in those stadiums knew every single word to your songs.”

She then ran through the list: Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” (“a very special moment”), Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” Jason Derulo’s “Want to Want Me,” Omi’s “Cheerleader,” Nick Jonas’s “Jealous,” Andy Grammer’s “Honey, I’m Good.,” Selena Gomez’s “Good for You”… “and all the rest of you guys, we’ll get you next tour.” Swift also gave shout-outs to Imagine Dragons (“I know this wasn’t the [honored] song, but we sang ‘Radioactive’”), Fall Out Boy (“came out on the last tour — still counts”), Fearless album co-writer Colbie Caillat, and Red collaborators Jeff Bhasker and Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody.

“Thank you for rewarding the favorite part of my life,” she told the crowd. “With all the adventures that this career path has brought, my favorite part is when I’m in the middle of a conversation with one of my friends, and my eyes glaze over and I awkwardly run into the corner… and I have to explain to them that I have this issue called ‘I love songwriting so much that it interrupts my daily life.’ And I know you all have it, too.”

Although Swift didn’t wax political with any of her remarks, O’Neill was happy in his introduction to make note of her music-biz advocacy, calling her “a powerful voice in the creative community and especially in the digital world. When Taylor removed her music from Spotify, she made a statement that there is value to your art … Taylor took on Apple, one of the most powerful and influential companies in the world, and she succeeded.”

A video reel somewhat resembled the autobiographical montages that have shown up during set changes on some of Swift’s tours, albeit with more of a biz bent. The family had video cameras rolling during her first visit to Nashville, and had footage of the moment she first laid eyes on the BMI complex there. She also discussed her struggle to be taken seriously as an 18-year-old performer facing allegations that she must be the lesser partner on all those co-writing credits, and how that led to creating the Speak Now song cycle without any collaborators.

In the video she was also more direct about the exact circumstances that led to the all-pop 1989 m.o. than perhaps she ever publicly acknowledged before, admitting that disappointment over her loss for the Album of the Year Grammy on Red was a motivator. (She won for Fearless and 1989, becoming the only two-time female winner ever in that category.)

At the start of 2012’s Red, “I was making country music, and I was getting ideas the same way I always did,” she said in the video, “but then a few months in, they started coming to me as pop melodies, and I could not fight it, and I just embraced it.” Still, “we labeled Red a country album, and it came out and got nominated for Album of the Year. When they announced the winner, it was like ‘And Album of the Year goes to Rrrrrrrandom Access Memories — Daft Punk.’ For a second there I kind of felt we had it, and we didn’t. We don’t make music so we can win a lot of awards, but you have to take your cues from somewhere if you‘re going to continue to evolve. And so I went to bed and I woke up at 4 in the morning like: ‘I’m going to make ‘80s synthpop, I’m just going to do that, I’m calling it a pop record—I’m starting tomorrow.’”