Taylor Swift's Acceptance Speech at the 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards

I want to say thank you to the NSAI for getting us all together for this event tonight. To me tonight feels brimming comradery between a bunch of people who just really love making stuff. Who really love the craft, who live for that rare, pure moment when a magical cloud floats down right in front of you in the form of an idea for a song and all you have to do is grab it. Then you shape it like clay, prune it like a garden, and wish on every lucky star or prey to whatever power you believe in that it might find its way out into the world and make someone feel seen, feel understood, feel joined in their grief or heartbreak or joy for just one moment."

Photo by Marisa Taylor

"I've learned by being in the entertainment for an extended period of time, that this business operates with a very new, new, new, next, next, next mentality, right? For every artist or songwriter, we're all just hoping for one great year, one great album cycle, one great run at radio, and these days, one song that goes viral on TikTok. One glorious moment in the sun because on your next project, you'll probably have to invent a new thing to be. Think of all new things to say and fresh ways to say them. You will have to entertain people and the fact is, what entertains us is either seeing new artists emerge or seeing established artists showing us a new side of themselves. If we are very very lucky, life will say to us, 'Your song is great.' The next thing life will say is, 'What else can you do?' I say all this because I am up here receiving this beautiful award for a decade of work and I can't possibly explain how nice that feels."

"Because the way I see it, this is an award that celebrates a culmination of moments, challenges, gauntlets laid down, albums I'm proud of, triumphs, strokes of luck or misfortune, loud, embarrassing errors, and the subsequent recovery of those mistakes and the lessons I learned from all of it. This award celebrates my family, and my co-writers, and my team, my friends, and my fiercest fans. And my harshest detractors and everyone who entered my life or left it because when it comes to songwriting and my life, they are on e in the same. As the great, Nora Ephron said, 'Everything is copy.' Twenty Years ago I wrote my first song. I used to dream about one day getting to bounce around the different musical world of my various sonic influences and change up the production of my albums. I hoped that one day the blending of genres wouldn't be such a big deal. There's so much discussion about genre and it usually always leads back to a conversation about melody and production, but that leaves out possibly my favorite part of songwriting, lyricism."

"And I have never talked about this publicly before because it's dorky, but I have in my mind, secretly, established genre categories for lyrics I write. Three of them to be exact. They are affectionately titled quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics, and glitter gel pen lyrics. I know this sounds confusing but I'll try to explain. I came up with these categories based on what writing tool I imagined having in my hand when I scribbled it down, figuratively. I don't actually have a quill anymore I broke it once when I was mad. I categorize certain songs of mine in the quill style if the words and phrasings are antiquated. If I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Bronte or after watching a movie where everyone is wearing poet shirts and corsets. If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson's grandmother while sowing a lace curtain, that's me writing in the quill genre. I will now give you an example of one of my songs I would categorize as quill: 'How's one to know? I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones in a faith forgotten land / In from the snow, your touch brought forth an incandescent glow / Tarnished but so grand.'"

Photo by Marisa Taylor

"Moving on to lyricism category number two, fountain pen style. I'd say most of my lyrics fall into this category. Fountain pen style means a modern storyline or references, with a poetic twist. Taking a common phrase and flipping its meaning. Basically trying to paint a vivid picture, a situation, down to the chipped paint on the doorframe and the incense dust on the vinyl shelf. Placing yourself and whoever's listening right into the room where it all happened: the love, the loss, everything. The songs I categorize in this style sound like confessions scribbled and sealed in an envelope, but too brutally honest to ever send. For example, ''Cause there we are again in the middle of the night / We're dancing round the kitchen in the refrigerator light / Down the stairs, I was there / I remember it all too well / And there we are again when nobody had to know / You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath / Sacred prayer and we'd swear / To remember it all too well.' Wow, guys."

The third category is called glitter gel pen. And it lives up to its name in every way. Frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat. Glitter gel pen lyrics don't care if you don't take them seriously because they don't take themselves seriously. Glitter gel pen lyrics are the drunk girl at the party who tells you that you look like an angel in the bathroom. It is what we need every once in a while in these fraught times in which we live. For example, "My ex-man brought his new girlfriend / She's like, 'Oh my God' but I'm just gonna shake / And to the fella over there with the hella good hair / Won't you come on over baby? / We can shake, shake, shake.'"

"Why did I make these categories you ask? Honestly, because I love doing this thing that we are fortunate enough to call a job. Writing songs is my life's work and my hobby and my never-ending thrill. I am moved beyond words that you, my peers, decided to honor me in this way for this work that I would still be doing if I'd never been recognized for it. Lately, I've been on a joyride down memory lane because I have been re-recording my six albums, and when I go through the process of meticulously recreating each element of my past, and revisiting the songs I wrote when I was 13, 14, 15, that path leads me right to Music Row. How my mom would pick me up from school and drive me to my co-writing sessions with dozens of writers, and some of you are in this very room tonight, who 15 years ago decided to give me their time, their wisdom, their belief, before anyone thought that writing with me was a productive use of an afternoon. I will never forget you, every last one of you."

"Part of my re-recording process has included adding songs that never made the original albums but songs I hated to leave behind. I've gone back and recorded a bunch of them for my version of my albums. Fearless my version came out last year and as I was choosing songs for it I came across one that I had written with the Warren brothers when I was 14. I decided to record it as a duet with the brilliant Keith Urban. And when I called up the Warrens to tell them I was cutting our song 17 years after we'd written it, I'll never forget the first thing they said. 'Well, I think that's the longest hold we've ever had.'"

Photo by Marisa Taylor

In 2011, just over 10 years ago, my trusted collaborator and confidant Liz Rose came over to my apartment and I showed her a song I had been working on. I was going through a rough time as is the natural state of being 21 and had scribbled down verse after verse after verse a song that was way too long to put on an album. It clocked in at around 10 minutes. So we set about editing, trimming, cutting out big sections until it was a reasonable five minutes and 30 seconds. It was called 'All Too Well.' Last year when I re-recorded my 2021 album Red I included this 10-minute version with its original version and extra bridges. I never could've imagined when we wrote it that that song would be resurfacing 10 years later or that I'd be about to play it for you tonight."

"When a song can defy logic or time, a good song transports you to your truest feelings and translates those feelings for you; a good song stays with you even when people or feelings don't. Writing songs is a calling and getting to call it your career makes you very lucky. You have to be grateful every day for it and for all the people who thought your words might be worth listening to. This town is the school that taught me that and to be honored by you means more than any genre of my lyrics could ever say. Thank you."

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