It’s officially CMA Awards season, and today, we’re taking a look back at 2009.
To call 2009 a “breakout year” for Taylor Swift might be an understatement. Granted, she had already burst onto the scene before that, releasing a stellar debut album in 2006.
But her sophomore project, Fearless, was where she really exploded, racking up award after award after award. We’re talking ACMs, CMAs, Grammys, VMAs… she was cleaning up.
Of course, 2009 was also the year of Kanye West’s infamous Taylor Swift acceptance speech interruption at the MTV Video Music Awards. In one of the most obnoxious moments of his career (and there has been A LOT of them), Kanye jumped on stage during Taylor’s speech for Best Female Video for “You Belong With Me” and famously said:
“Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!”
Of course, a dejected Taylor just said “thank you” and walked off stage.
And to this day, it’s still one of the most talked about awards show moments in history, and pretty early in the downward spiral that has become Kanye West’s career. It was also alleged that the one of the dudes from Kings of Leon had to be restrained from going up there to beat Kanye’s a*s.
Nevertheless, Taylor got her revenge in more ways than one, but one of the earliest was just two months later at the Country Music Association Awards.
Taylor absolutely dominated that year winning Entertainer of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year, Video of the Year, and even an International Artist Achievement Award.
And during her acceptance speech for Female Vocalist, she took the opportunity to throw some shade at Kanye West.
“And I want to thank everybody in the room tonight for not running up on the stage during my speech.”
Later on, she would win the coveted CMA Entertainer of the Year Award, making the 19-year-old the youngest to ever do it.
Here’s that speech:
And now, not only is she one of the biggest names in music, but she’s one of the most talked about people in the NFL too. Crazy.
