Halsey was a big winner at Sunday night's American Music Awards and used her acceptance speech to throw a little shade at another, more prestigious awards ceremony: the Grammys.
When the 2020 Grammy nominations were announced last week, Halsey was nowhere to be found -- surprising, considering she's one of pop's biggest names and has had an objectively great year. At the AMAs, Halsey's chart-topping hit "Without Me" won the Favorite Pop/Rock Song category, and the bisexual pop star's acceptance speech was clearly aimed at the Grammys.
"I believed these awards," she said while accepting her trophy. "When I was a kid, I used to believe that this award was the ultimate validation and that I'd come up here and laugh and cry and my fans at home would rejoice because we accomplished this thing together."
"But the truth is I am older now and I'm also an artist and apparently I'm doing OK," she reflected. "But most of these awards really aren't what they seem at all."
Halsey added that she "grew up watching shows like this and I would sit at home wide-eyed and watch artists in these beautiful gowns and handsome suits, stroll up the stairs to the stage, and they would hold up these awards and they were usually gold-plated and shiny and weighted, these metaphors, these trophies that were supposed to be some kind of validation for the soul-crushing and heartache-inducing work that they put into writing a song and bringing it to life." She said, "And to be honest with you, I really believed that fairy tale."
Later in the ceremony, Halsey joined Taylor Swift, who was honored as the AMAs Artist of the Decade, for a medley of Swift's hits. Swift has also been snubbed by the Grammys in recent years -- when it comes to the coveted Album of the Year prize, at least -- so maybe they bonded over that?
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