Accepting her first AMA (favorite pop/rock song for “Without Me”), Halsey gave a speech that was both awed and cynical. She started by explaining she grew up watching awards shows “wide-eyed” as artists picked up gold-plated “metaphors” representing “validation for the soul-crushing and heartache-inducing work that they put into writing a song and bringing it to life.”

“But most of these awards really aren’t what they seem,” she continued. “At all. But that’s O.K. because I’m up here right now and I am so thankful to the AMAs because they’re the world’s largest fan-voted awards show. And I’m thankful to the fans because they’re the people who” — at this point the audio cut out, but reading Halsey’s lips, you can tell she used an expletive to express “caring to a high degree.”

Swift, whose “Lover” album didn’t receive as many Grammy nominations as many expected, was clearly listening: “The speech of the whole night goes to Halsey,” she later said at the podium.