Taylor Swift: I get to stand on the stage every single night of this tour and watch some of the most beautiful things happen. I watch you guys make friends with each other, I watch you bond, I watch you give each other friendship bracelets. I see so many beautiful interactions happen and I hear so many stories about friends that were made at these shows. I watch it happen every night. It's the most unbelievable thing to watch. So I was hoping to ask you that, as we lead up to this album [Speak Now (Taylor's Version)] coming out, I would love for that kindness and that gentleness to extend onto our internet activities. Right? So what I'm trying to say is, I'm putting this album out because I want to own my music, and I believe that any artist that has the desire to own their music should be able to. That's why I'm putting out this album.
I'm 33 years old. I don't care about anything that happened to me when I was 19 except the songs I wrote and the memories we made together. So what I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not putting this album out so that you should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 billion years ago. I do not care. We have all grown up. We're good.
So I'm saying that because: only because I am proud of it as a song, I am going to play "Dear John."
[Applause]