That’s kind of unforgivable, I think…
Last night, Taylor Swift was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame during ceremony at Music City Center in Nashville alongside Lyle Lovett, Shawn Camp, Lee Thomas Miller, and Bruce Channel. She was inducted as part of the Contemporary Songwriter/Artist category, becoming the youngest inductee in the organization’s history at age 36. George Strait was also honored as a special guest to receive the organization’s prestigious Career Maker Award.
Brad Paisley had the honor of doing her introduction, and according to The Tennessean, he had some lovely things to say as someone who has known her since the beginning of her massive career, as she started out in country music:
“Well, I’m here tonight to introduce only the youngest person that’s ever done this. More than that, this is emotional. 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. Shout out to Liz here tonight. And all of us were like, how is this teenager doing this? How is she so brilliant?
And then she goes off and just 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. I mean, something like 149 sold-out stadiums on the last tour, over six continents. I didn’t know there were that many. And the world lines up to hear her.
And more than that, she is the voice of a generation. 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 Billy Joel called our generation’s Beatles. It’s true. 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 recorder with the guitar, and then go out and conquer the universe.
I’m so honored to get this chance tonight because I think, I’m speaking for her now, this might be your proudest thing, right? At your core, you’re a songwriter.”
Taylor took the stage, first thanking Lainey Wilson for her stripped-back performance of “Love Story,” calling her “one of the coolest people”:
“Wow. I first of all want to say thank you to Lainey Wilson, who I just think is one of the coolest people. I’ve been doing that. And I’ve had her new single on repeat. It just puts me in the best mood. It’s called ‘Kind of Love It.’ Check it out.”
Taylor then revealed a story that happened while she was opening for Paisley on his 2007 Bonfires & Amplifiers Tour, when he took a tour prank a little too far…
Paisley set loose thousands of crickets on Taylor’s tour bus, and she says for months, she couldn’t sleep, because all she could hear was “chirp, chirp, chirp” all night. She joked that she “considered buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem,” adding that it was “a dark time.” The two have remained friends since then, but I’m not sure I could forgive something like that…
“Brad Paisley, thank you so much for that, 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 chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. All night.
I considered buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem. It was a 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 now.”
Paisley and his wife attended Taylor’s July 3rd wedding to her husband Travis Kelce, and so it’s certainly all well and good, but I think Paisley took that prank a little too far… a fair warning to the next young opener who decides to tour with him, I guess. Even Taylor Swift wasn’t safe…
She went on to talk about what an honor it was to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame:
“So, you know, 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, staring at Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. I was just like, wow, this is crazy.”
Elsewhere in her speech, Taylor talked about how much she learned from the Nashville songwriters who taught her the craft, and how much it has influenced her career well beyond country, saying it’s the only reason she has the “fundamentals and the foundation” she learned in Music City:
“One thing that I did learn is that songwriters, although they possess a superhuman ability to understand and interpret the human condition and like insane levels of empathy, they are just people too, and they are people who are in a lot of ways raised me and guided me through formative years… 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.”
You can watch her full speech here:
