Another View... and a Transcript

This comes to us from Lisa R. Lisa, did you transcribe this?? Anyway, it's another shot of the awesome moments after IBLYF, this time with the full speech intact. You can see the signage that people had brought as well.

“Houston! Over a year and a half ago, me and Jordan were in the car, listening to a song… we called Joe and played it for him and sent it to Danny and Jon, and suddenly we were on a trip and we didn’t know where we were going….

And we showed up a few months later, in the freezing rain, on the Today Show. I figured it was too cold and rainy for anybody to come outside and give a damn about us.

But instead, a couple thousand crazy girls who hadn’t seen us in 15 years were sitting out there screaming for us. Then we came back a few months later to that same New York street television studio – this time we had to sing and dance for the first time in 15 years. There were puddles all over the stage, it was raining and freezing cold again, only this time there weren’t two thousand of you…….there was about twenty thousand of you!

And I think we all understood at that moment, and I think the world understood at that moment. It didn’t matter if you were freezing cold, it didn’t matter if we were slipping and busting our asses on the stage in front of 20 million people all around the world…you all were the engine that made us go!

I said earlier today to somebody – we put a lot of time and energy, invested a lot of not knowing what was going to happen, and we built a ship, a sailboat. It was a beautiful boat and we put it in the water, but the boat ain’t gonna go nowhere without the wind. You all’s voices, you all’s hearts, you all’s love, is the wind that makes this ship sail.

We saw most of you as little girls all those years ago… you carried us then, when everyone thought you were crazy, prepubescent girls who didn’t know what they was talking about. And now we get to see you, all these years later, as women, with jobs and careers, and beautiful children and husbands and families. And you came back, and you’re carrying us again!

Let me just say, for the whole world to know - and I know that every guy on this stage feels the same way – we didn’t prove anybody wrong this time around – YOU proved them wrong! You proved them wrong! ‘Cause nobody in this world can tell me that the fine, amazing, brilliant, sophisticated, beautiful women that come to see us every single night don’t know what they’re talking about!

Y’all know me, I’ll talk forever if you let me, so I’m gonna shut up…

On that note, we’re coming to the end of a journey, and today’s the day that we can look at in two ways: we can look at it as the end of a wonderful year, an incredible year, where we all helped each other…and made each other feel good during some terrible, terrible times we all [garbled]… or we can look at tonight at the start of our next year!

And now that we’ve reunited and now that we’ve solidified our bond… Houston, I am happy to say that the state of this union is STRONG! Can we start next year’s party right now???”