Taylor Swift Becomes an Award-Winning Director With 2023 Grammy Win

Taylor Swift just added yet another banner to her long list of accolades: award-winning director.

At the Grammys pre-show, Swift took home the award for Best Music Video for her All Too Well: The Short Film. The self-directed video was pitted against Adele’s “Easy on Me,” BTS’ “Yet to Come,” Doja Cat’s “Woman,” Harry Styles’ “As It Was” and “Kendrick Lamar’s “The Heart Part 5.”

The extended music video starred Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink and The Maze Runner‘s Dylan O’Brien. Mirroring the plot detailed in the song, the titular couple goes through the span of a relationship— dealing with the turmoil caused by their break-up and learning to move on. The deeply personal video came alongside Swift’s re-recorded version of her 2012 album, Red.

“I can’t put into words what this means to me,” Swift wrote on Twitter in response to the win. “For the @RecordingAcad and my peers to acknowledge me as a director, and in doing so, acknowledge my work to try and reclaim my music… I’m blown away. Thank you to all the fans who willed this to happen.”

“Emotionally, I was going through exactly what the short film depicts, and I think that time is such an incredible asset to use when we have these stories that are hard to tell,” Swift said of directing “All Too Well” earlier this year. “Because it’s good if a story is hard to tell, that means it’s incredibly emotionally potent, but it’s impossible to tell it with perspective and truth if you’re in it sometimes.”

The win marks Swift’s 12th Grammy and her second for Best Music Video, the first being her Kendrick Lamar-assisted visual for “Bad Blood.”

Swift has also received nominations for Best Country Song alongside Chris Stapleton for “I Bet You Think About Me,” Best Song Written For Visual Media for her Where the Crawdads Sing theme “Carolina” and Song of the Year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version).”

Since directing “All Too Well,” Swift has announced that she will direct her first feature-length film based on an original script she wrote. The pop star has tapped Searchlight Pictures to partner with her on the project.

Photo by Jon Kopaloff/WireImage