Taylor Swift received the Songwriter of the Decade award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International at the NSAI’s annual ceremony on Tuesday (September 20).
Accepting the award at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Swift gave a 13-minute speech in which she discussed her approach to songwriting, re-recording her first six studio albums following her high-profile masters dispute, the version spread of ‘All Too Well’. who appeared on ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ last year and more.
“I’m here to receive this magnificent award for a decade of work, and I can’t explain how nice it is. Because to me, it’s an award that celebrates a culmination of moments,” Swift said upon accepting the award, as transcribed by Fork.
“Challenges. Gauntlets laid down. Albums I’m proud of. Triumphs. Strokes of luck or misfortune. Loud, embarrassing mistakes and the subsequent recovery from those mistakes, and the lessons learned from it all.
“This award celebrates my family, my co-writers and my team. My fiercest friends and fans and my toughest detractors and everyone who has come into my life or left it. Because in what concerns my writing and my life, they are one.
Swift went on to describe how she writes the lyrics, explaining that she breaks them down into three distinct genre categories – “quill”, “fountain pen” and “glitter gel” – depending on the writing tool she uses. imagine having in his hand to write them. .
The lyrics to “Quill”, she said, are songs written if the words and phrases used are “outdated”, if she was “inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or after watching a film where everyone wears poet’s shirts and corsets”. Swift then recited a section of lyrics from “Ivy,” taken from 2020’s “Evermore,” as an example of such lyrics.
“Fountain pen”-style lyrics, on the other hand, are those that have “modern script or references, with a poetic twist,” Swift said. “Take a common phrase and reverse its meaning. Trying to paint a vivid picture of a situation, down to the peeling paint on the door frame and the incense dust on the vinyl shelf. Place yourself and the listener right there in the room where it all happened.
Categorizing the songs in the style as resembling “confessions scribbled and sealed in an envelope, but too brutally honest to ever be sent”, Swift cited “All Too Well” as an example.
Finally, Swift said the “glitter gel pen” lyrics were ones that were “frivolous, carefree, bouncy, perfectly syncopated to the beat”, and which “it doesn’t matter if you don’t take them seriously because they don’t take not seriously themselves”.
Describing them as “the drunk girl at the party who tells you you look like an angel in the bathroom,” Swift then recited the bridge from 2014’s “Shake It Off” as an example of those lyrics.
“Writing songs is my life’s work, my hobby and my endless pleasure. I am moved beyond words that you, my peers, have decided to honor me in this way for the work that I would still be doing if I had never been recognized for it.
Swift went on to discuss who she’s been on a “car ride down memory lane” lately, re-recording her first six albums. “Part of my re-recording process included adding songs that never made the original albums, but songs that I hated to leave behind,” Swift said. “I went back and recorded a bunch of it for my version of my albums.”
Swift then told the story of her song ‘All Too Well’, which originally appeared on her 2012 album ‘Red’, and was re-recorded as an extended version with previously cut original verses and additional bridges, near a decade later, for last year’s ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’.
“I never could have imagined when we wrote it that this song would resurface ten years later,” Swift said. “But 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 being able to call it your career makes you very lucky. You have to be grateful for that every day, and all the people who thought your lyrics were worth listening to. This town is the school that taught me this. To be honored by you means more than any kind of my words could ever say. Thank you.” Swift then performed the full 10-minute version of “All Too Well” live.
“Midnights,” Swift’s 10th studio album, is set to arrive next month on October 21. She first announced the upcoming album — the sequel to 2020’s “Folklore” and “Evermore” — at the MTV Video Music Awards last month. The singer recently revealed that she worked with her former collaborator Jack Antonoff on the album.