Watch: Lizzo Addresses Rumors She “Talked S–t” About Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift will always remember this moment in the back of her mind.
When the Grammy winner was officially inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame during a June 11 ceremony alongside fellow powerhouses Alanis Morissette and Kenny Loggins, she delivered a speech that thanked he most important people in her life: her parents, Andrea Swift and Scott Swift, as well as brother Austin Swift.
“It was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life,” she said during her speech, as seen in a clip shared by Variety. “But it couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother to just pick up and move our entire family from Pennsylvania to relocate to Nashville, so that I could hone my craft. in the songwriting capital of the world.”
“But after it became obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their tween daughter was going through,” Swift continued, “they uprooted their entire lives to move me to Music City.”
It was after describing her families’ sacrifice, that she became emotional.
“Even though words are supposed to kind of be my thing,” the Midnights artist added, holding back tears. “I will never be able to express my gratitude to you guys for doing that for me. You’re the reason I’m here tonight.”
Swift was named as one of the 2026 inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in January following her nomination last October. In addition to Morissette, who penned “You Oughta Know” and Loggins, known for hits like “Footloose,” her class includes KISS members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, songwriting duo Terry Britten and Graham Lyle as well as Walter Afanasieff.
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For her part, Swift, who will soon tie the knot with Travis Kelce, has proved her songwriting chops time and again since her debut in 2006. And since the very beginning of her career, the “Blank Space” singer has made a point to differentiate herself in the music industry with the power of her pen.
“I started writing songs when I was 12,” Swift told the New York Times in April. “As soon as my love for singing and picking up an instrument happened, songwriting just spontaneously started becoming the entire cornerstone of my life.”
But while she was a prodigy producing early hits like “Tim McGraw” and “Love Story,” her process has evolved over time, as she noted to the New York Times, “This takes craft, this takes skill.”
Indeed, songwriting for Swift can be happy, free, confused and lonely at the time.
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“There are definitely moments when it’s a cloud of an idea and it comes and lands in front of your face, and you reach up and grab it,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2018. “A lot of songwriting is things you learn, structure, and cultivating that skill, and knowing how to craft a song. But there are mystical, magical moments, inexplicable moments when an idea that is fully formed just pops into your head.”
No matter if she’s along with her guitar or in a studio with collaborators like Max Martin or Jack Antonoff, the “Opalite” singer will always view her job as the same hobby she picked up when she was a kid.
“It can get complicated on every other level,” she noted, “but the songwriting is still the same uncomplicated process it was when I was 12 years old writing songs in my room.”
For more of what makes Swift one of the biggest forces in the entertainment industry, keep reading…
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