Taylor Swift looked back on her earliest days crafting songs in Music City as she was inducted Monday into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, becoming its youngest member at 36. Swift was inducted by former tourmate Brad Paisley, whom she teased, and serenaded by Lainey Wilson, whom she praised, before launching into a lengthy speech about what she learned in the trenches of Music Row as a teenager. Praising the town that she said raised her, Swift said, per Rolling Stone, “There is no music community like this music community.
I checked all the communities.” Swift was being inducted alongside Lyle Lovett, Bruce Channel, Shawn Camp and Lee Thomas Miller (plus the late J.I. Allison, of Buddy Holly and the Crickets). Also being honored with a special award at the ceremony was country superstar George Strait, who was getting the Career Maker Award, something only one other artist has received, in honor of what he has accomplished for others performing their material.
The tradition at Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremonies is for the inductees not to sing or play themselves but rather to enjoy a performance of one of their songs by another notable star or major figure. In this case it was Lainey Wilson doing a stripped-back version of “Love Story,” to which Swift offered some reciprocal support by getting in a plug for Wilson’s new single. 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.” Paisley gave an introduction in which he recalled marveling at how she went from proving she was a star with her first two albums and proving once and for all that she was a songwriting all-timer with her entirely self-penned third album. How is she so brilliant?’ And then she goes off and really put her feelings into something that is 100% hers and writes the ‘Speak Now’ album all by herself,” he reminisced.
He and his band and his opening acts would always famously play prans on each other, and Swift suggested it might have gone a bit too next-level by the end. I’m really surprised to see you here, actually,” she said, “because we’ve been estranged since 2007. He took a tour prank too far.
Filled my entire tour bus with live crickets. For months, I couldn’t sleep. Just chirp… chirp… chirp.” A pause, and then, again: “Chirp — all night.
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