Taylor Swift has extended her own record as iHeartRadio’s most decorated artist of all time, walking away from Thursday night’s ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles with seven wins from nine nominations, bringing her all-time total to 41 iHeartRadio Music Award wins.
Swift, who attended with fiancé Travis Kelce, kicked off her winning streak by accepting best pop album of the year for The Life of a Showgirl, presented by Raye.
She used the moment to credit Kelce directly.
“I think that this album feels very happy and confident and free because that’s the way that I get to feel every single day of my life, because of my fiancé who’s here tonight,” she said.
“Thank you to iHeart and thank you to anyone who cared about The Fate of Ophelia, because you made that into the biggest hit of my career, which is crazy at this point.”
The night shifted up a gear when figure skater Alysa Liu presented her with six further awards in one go, including artist of the year and album of the year.
Swift used the platform to deliver a message that clearly meant a great deal to her, about creativity, patience and protecting your dreams from the internet.
“We live in this world where there’s so much immediate feedback, constantly,” she said.
“Anything you feed your mind, it will internalize. Anything you feed the internet, it will attempt to kill, and I don’t want that for your dreams. So just thank you for allowing me to turn my hobby into a love, into a passion, into a dream, into a career.”
The show, hosted by Ludacris, also featured performances from Lainey Wilson, Alex Warren, who took home breakthrough artist of the year, Kehlani, Raye and a joint set from TLC, Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue previewing their upcoming summer tour.
Ludacris closed out the evening with a run of his own hits.
