Taylor Swift got nostalgic during her acceptance speech at the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. The superstar became the institution’s youngest member after being inducted by Brad Paisley during a ceremony Monday evening in Nashville.
Swift thanked Lainey Wilson for her stripped-down performance of “Love Story” and even made fun of Paisley, her former tour mate. “We’ve been separated since 2007,” she told the country singer before divulging the reason to the star-studded audience at Music City Center. “He took a prank too far, filled my entire tour bus with live crickets, thousands of them. For months I couldn’t sleep. All night I considered getting a pet lizard to eradicate the problem.”
During her speech, the singer-songwriter reflected on her time in Nashville, where she began her storied career, and praised co-writer Liz Rose and producer Nathan Chapman, who worked on her self-titled debut album.
You can read Swift’s full induction speech below.
So I’m very honored to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. I received the news and was just looking at the words. I was watching Nashville. I was like, “Wow, this is crazy. »And then I kind of focused on a few words that had a particularly intense impact on my life. The first being “Nashville”, the second “songwriters”. And the last, “fame”. I’d like to start with the songwriters and expand on the impact this word has had on my life.
I started writing songs when I was little and I knew as soon as I wrote my first song that even if it couldn’t be my career, it would be my passion. That would be what I focused my whole life on. Nashville is where I went in my college daydreams. It was the place where all the wisdom I wanted to gain existed in one place. All the lessons I wanted to learn existed for me in this magical place. And it ended up being all of that and more. That ended up being it.
Fame is sort of a byproduct of my love for music. It’s almost like a songwriter plus Nashville equals stardom. That’s why a lot of people know the lyrics to my music, which is great. It’s also why there are sort of these daily random doses of chaos that crop up in my life every once in a while, every couple of hours. This might sound a little weird, but I have tools in place in my mind that help me navigate and get back to the true north when life seems so weird.
These tools are my memories and the memories I visit most frequently when I need to return to some semblance of memory of what normal is and why I do this. I think back to when I came to Nashville and started writing on Music Row. I was lucky enough to land a publishing deal with Sony Publishing when I was 14 and I’m just getting started. I started writing every day. I learned so much. I was like a sponge and I have very curly hair and it was yellow, so I looked like a sponge too. But I learned through repetition. I think you really learn a craft when you practice it over and over again and that’s what the wonderful songwriters working in this incredible city do. There is no music community like this music community. I know. I checked all the communities. Nobody does it.
I learned so much. I learned how to overcome a creative block when you’re in the middle of a session. Are we going to dig a tunnel under this? Are we going to obstruct it? I learned what ideas are worth fighting for, what ideas are worth abandoning and moving on to the next one. I’ve learned to adapt when your co-writer is hungover or when they’re going to need to talk about their divorce for a very long time before writing anything. Because one thing I’ve learned is that songwriters, while possessing the superhuman ability to understand and interpret the human condition and insane levels of empathy, are also just people. And these are people who, in many ways, raised and guided me throughout my formative years.
One of the memories that I often look back on in good days and bad because it just makes me feel good is that I used to write a lot in two favorite buildings. I had two favorite places that I enjoyed writing the most. The first was the Sony Firehouse, because you could hear the other writers through the walls and I just liked to pretend I was in the Brill building. And then my favorite was a place called Jody Williams Music, an independent publishing house located in a small craftsman’s house. Let’s say the year looks like 2005 in this memory. My mom would pick me up from Hendersonville High School, drive me downtown and drop me off and I’d run past Jody Williams Music and say “Hello” to Katherine who was working out front and sometimes her boyfriend Eric would be there visiting. Things went well for them. They have a few children, married for 20 years now. His full name is Eric Church, just for clarity.
But then I would run up the stairs and drop onto the couch in front of Liz Rose in this red-painted room. And I’ll say, “Liz, this happened at school today. I have a hook that I want to like, you know, you have to write this thing.” And she would get her notebook and we would write so fast. When we’re done with the song, I do a little jog around the back of this house to the backyard where there was a garden shed. And in that garden shed was a one-man studio where Jody Williams Music’s favorite demo producer, Nathan Chapman, was making demos.
I would arrive and Nathan would play all the instruments on these demos and he would interpret my music so intuitively that later I would fight for him to produce my entire first album. And it was our first album, both of us. And I’m shocked and stunned to say that a few days ago this album was 20 years old. I’ve been very lucky to be able to jump genres, travel the world, and write with so many different people in so many different ways. And the only reason I’ve been able to have this kind of dexterity in my creative process is because of the fundamentals and foundations that I learned here in Nashville. And I never forget that for a second when I talk to everyone I know about what we have here. And I am incredibly honored to be inducted into this hallowed club, especially at this point in my life.
It’s not lost on me how crazy this is. I will cherish it forever because Nashville is the place that refined and honed what I am most passionate about and about in my life. So to be here with you and to be able to experience this moment, I’m really grateful and this feels like one of those amazing Nashville moments that I’m going to revisit on a rainy day. Thank you so much.
Swift’s other inductees included Shawn Camp, Bruce Channel, Lyle Lovett and Lee Thomas Miller, as well as country music icon George Strait, who received the Career Make Award. The evening also honored the late JI Allison, a member of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, who was inducted into the institution’s Legacy category for his work on rock classics like “That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue” and “More Than I Can Say.”
Swift’s induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame comes at a special time for the star. Last week, on October 24, the singer-songwriter’s self-titled debut album celebrated its 20th anniversary. This honor also comes as Swift continues to highlight her roots in country music. Earlier this year, she released her first country song in years, “I Knew It, I Knew You.” During an interview for the Grammys Icon Sessions, she gushed about her past. “I love my country roots more and more as I go on this path and I want to honor them more and more,” Swift said at the time, adding, “I feel more and more connected to them, more loyal to them…The people who shaped who I am as an artist and as a writer, all of that happened in Nashville.”
Gn entert
