After playfully joking about last year’s encounter with Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards in her hosting appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” Taylor Swift offered a more emotional take on the matter in her performance at the 2010 edition of the awards.
Swift delivered the most dramatic televised performances of her career midway through the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, singing a poignant ballad that implicitly declared West (and possibly herself) “still an innocent.” The song was announced as being part of the tracklist for her upcoming album “Speak Now.”
The performance was introduced with a video rehashing of last year’s incident, in which Kanye West stormed the stage during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video to declare that Beyonce was the rightful winner for her “Single Ladies.” But instead of a gag that involved someone “interrupting” Swift’s performance or a comedic folk song, Swift delivered a tender, yet serious performance from a stool before making her way to center stage.
Based on the lyrical content (including references to “lunchbox dates”), it initially appeared the focus of Swift’s song might have been the battle to preserve her naive, innocent vision of celebrity in the face of what happened at last year’s awards show. But she made at least one subject of her song very clear with the line, “32 is still growing up now.” West was thirty two at the time of last year’s encounter.
There has not yet been an interaction between Swift and West; West performs later in the broadcast.
