Taylor Swift made history on Monday night, becoming the youngest-ever member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (NaSHOF) during the organization’s 56th Anniversary Gala at Music City Center in downtown Nashville.
Swift was inducted in the songwriter/artist category alongside Shawn Camp and Lee Thomas Miller in the songwriter category, Bruce Channel in the veteran songwriter category and Lyle Lovett in the veteran songwriter/artist category. The late J.I. Allison was also inducted into the Hall’s Legacy category, which honors deceased songwriters.
Brad Paisley Honors Taylor Swift’s Songwriting Journey
NaSHOF member Brad Paisley was on hand to officially welcome Taylor Swift into the organization, delivering a heartfelt speech honoring the 36-year-old superstar and her journey from a teenage songwriter in Nashville to a global music icon. Paisley, who toured with Swift early in her career, admitted it was “emotional” to have the opportunity to honor her in this way.
“This is somebody who has conquered the world and done it with songs. She is first and foremost one of us, somebody that came to Nashville as a teenager, started writing with Liz Rose,” he said. “All of us were like, ‘How is this teenager doing this? How is she so brilliant?’ And then she goes off into sort of really put her feelings into something that is 100% hers, writes the Speak Now album all by herself. It’s an amazing thing to watch her evolution from somebody who realized this all starts with a song to take that exact thing and change the world… and literally the world.”
Paisley also pointed to Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, which included 149 sold-out stadium shows across six continents. “I didn’t even know there were that many,” he joked.
On a more serious note, Paisley praised Swift as “the voice of the generation,” highlighting the way her songs have connected with fans around the world.
“She has encapsulated the heartbreak of girls and boys and people who have needed the songs that she writes for so long…She is somebody that more than anything I think this matters to her tonight that she’s one of you. And it’s an amazing thing to watch that somebody can accomplish when they write the truth on a piece of paper, put it in the tape record with the guitar and then go out and conquer planet Earth.”
Lainey Wilson Pays Tribute With ‘Love Story’ Performance
Paisley then welcomed Lainey Wilson to the stage, where she paid tribute to Swift with a performance of her self-written, chart-topping hit “Love Story.”
Following Wilson’s performance, Swift was officially welcomed into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. She began by thanking Wilson for the tribute and sharing her love for the singer’s new music.
“I, first of all want to say thank you to Lainey Wilson, who I just think is one of the greatest people in the world. Thank you for doing that,” Swift shared from the stage. “And I’ve had her new single on repeat. It just puts me in the best mood. It’s called ‘Kinda Love It.’ Check it out.”
Taylor Swift Jokes About Brad Paisley’s Infamous Tour Prank
Swift then turned her attention to Paisley, joking that the two had been “estranged” for nearly 20 years because of a prank he pulled on her early in her career.
“Brad Paisley, thank you so much for that introduction. I’m really surprised to see you here actually because we’ve been estranged since 2007. I think you know why. He took a tour prank too far, filled my entire tour bus with live crickets, thousands of them. For months I couldn’t sleep, just all night. I considered buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem. It was dark time, but you know what? You did such an amazing job with that introduction. I think we can let bygones be bygones. Yeah, I think we’re good with that.”
Swift accepted the honor with a speech lasting more than 10 minutes, looking back on her early days in Nashville and thanking the songwriting community that helped shape her career. Read her full speech below.
Read Taylor Swift’s Full Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Speech
I am so honored to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. I got the news and I was just kind of staring at the words. I was staring at Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. I was just like, ‘wow, this is crazy.’ And then I kind of zeroed in on a few words that have had a particularly intense impact on my life. The first one being Nashville, the second songwriters, and the last one, fame.
I’d like to start with songwriters and expanding upon the impact that word has had on my life. I started writing songs when I was a little kid and I knew from the time I wrote my first song that even if it couldn’t be my career, it would be my passion. It would be what I centered my entire life around.
Nashville is the place that I went to in my middle school daydreams. It was the place where all the wisdom that I wished to acquire existed in one place. All the lessons that I wished to learn existed in this magical place for me. And it ended up being all of that and more. It ended up being everything.
Fame, that’s sort of a byproduct of my love for music. It’s kind of like songwriter plus Nashville equals fame. It’s why a lot of people know the words to my music, which is awesome. It’s also why there’s sort of like these daily random doses of chaos that just pop up in my life every once in a while, every couple of hours. And that can be kind of weird, but I have tools in place in my mind that help me kind of navigate that and get back to true north when life feels a little bizarre. Those tools are my memories and the memories that I visit most frequently when I need to return back to some semblance of remembering what normalcy is and why I do this.
I think back to when I first got to Nashville and I started writing on Music Row. I was lucky enough to get a publishing deal with Sony Publishing when I was 14 and I just hit the ground running. I started writing every single day. I learned so much. I was like a sponge and I had really curly hair and it was yellow, so I kind of looked like a sponge too.
But I learned by repetition. I think you truly learn a craft when you do it over and over and over. And that is what the magnificent songwriters that work in this amazing town do. There is no music community like this music community. I know, I’ve checked all the communities. There’s no one doing it like us. I learned so much. I learned how to push through a creative block when you’re in the middle of a session point. Are we going to tunnel under this? Are we going to hurdle over it? I learned which ideas are worth fighting for, which ideas are worth letting go of and move on to the next one. I learned how to accommodate when your co-writer has a hangover or when they’re going to need to talk about their divorce for a really long time before we write anything. Because one thing that I did learn is that songwriters, although they possess a superhuman ability to understand and interpret the human condition and insane levels of empathy, they are just people too. And they are people who in a lot of ways raised me and guided me through my formative years.
One of the memories I revisit a lot on good days and bad, because it just makes me feel cozy, is that I used to write a lot in two favorite buildings. I had two favorite places that I loved to write the most. The first one being the Sony Fire Hall because you could hear the other writers through the walls and I just kind of liked to pretend that I was in the Brill building. And then my most favorite was a place called Jody Williams Music, an independent publishing company that was located in a little craftsman house. And let’s say the year is like 2005….My mom would pick me up from Hendersonville High School, drive me downtown and drop me off and I’d scamper in the front of Jody Williams music and I’d say hi to Katherine who worked at the front and sometimes her boyfriend Eric would be there visiting. Things have gone great for them. They’ve got a couple kids, married like 20 years now. His full name is Eric Church, just for clarity.
But then I’d run up the stairs and I would plop down on the couch in front of Liz Rose in this room that was painted red. And I’d be like, “Liz, this happened in school today. I’ve got a hook that I want to… We got to write this thing.” And she’d get her notebook and we’d just write so fast. And when we finished with the song, I’s kind of jog out the back of this house to the backyard where there was a garden shed. And in that garden shed was a one person studio where Jody Williams Music’s favorite demo producer, Nathan Chapman, was making demos.
And I would run in and Nathan would play every single instrument on these demos and he interpreted my music so intuitively that later on I would fight for him to produce my entire first album. And it was our first album, both of us. And I am shocked and stunned to say that as of a couple days ago, that album is 20 years old.
I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve gotten to genre hop and travel the world and write with so many different people and in so many different ways. And the only reason that I’ve been able to have that kind of dexterity in my creative process is because of the fundamentals and the foundation that I learned here in Nashville. And I never forget that for a single second and I tell every single person I know about what we have here.
And I’m so incredibly honored to be inducted into this sacred club, especially at this point in my life. It’s not lost on me how crazy this is. And I will cherish it forever because Nashville is the place that honed and polished the thing about myself and the thing about my life that I am the most proud of and the most passionate about. So to be here with you and to be getting to have this moment, I am truly grateful and it just feels like one of those amazing Nashville moments I’m going to revisit on a rainy day. Thank you so much.
Swift attended the event with her mother, Andrea Swift, and father, Scott Swift, by her side.