THE RUNDOWN
- Taylor Swift chose a burgundy floral minidress for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony.
- She accessorized with a necklace and purple heels.
- Swift is the youngest writer to ever be inducted.
Taylor Swift began her music career in Nashville, and this evening, the singer was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. For the induction ceremony, she chose a dreamy velvet burgundy minidress by Raisa Vanessa with orange floral detailing. She accessorized with a necklace, earrings, and purple heels.
It marks a history-making moment for Swift, as she is the youngest writer to join at age 36.
When news of her being inducted first came out in August, Swift released a statement expressing her gratitude. “From the time I started writing songs as a child, I fixated on Nashville as the perfect place to be,” she said. “I wanted to learn with and from the best and get to immerse myself in a community of storytellers, and thankfully Nashville turned out to be exactly what I’d dreamed of. A town that validated and prioritized hard work, determination, and imagination. Where the writers show up to work every day even when the mysterious muses and the magic don’t. To be honored by this city I love so much is a beautiful thing, and I’m very grateful.”
Swift was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this year, becoming the youngest woman to receive the honor. She spoke about Nashville’s role in her career during her speech.
When she was a tween, her parents relocated to Nashville for her career “so that I could hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world,” she recalled. “But after it became obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their tween daughter was going through, they uprooted their entire lives to move me to Music City, and even though words are supposed to kind of be my thing, 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.”
She discussed the progress she made there: “In Nashville, I took meetings and I played acoustic shows until I was able to secure a publishing deal. I got signed when I was 14. Oh, thanks [for the applause]. And I got the chance to work with incredibly wise and experienced co-writers, people like Liz Rose, Troy Burgess, Hillary Lindsey, Robert Ellis Orrall, Angelo [Petraglia], the Warren brothers, and the late but so very loved Brett James. So I’d written over 100 songs on my own at that point. But this would be my first experience co-writing.
“My parents had raised me to be overprepared, show up early, never assume the world owes you anything,” she continued. “And I might have been 14 years old, but I didn’t want anyone in a professional setting to treat me like a baby, or for these songwriters to think that I expected them to write songs for me to slap my name on, so at this point I started to approach songwriting like a full-time vocation.”
She did that, “spending nearly all of my free time writing ideas in preparation for my writing sessions, and then stopping myself at a certain point to allow my co-writers to later weigh in, so some of these ideas were 50 percent done, some were 75 percent done, some were just a hook with lyrics and a melody or a chorus. I stockpiled them, so that when I went into a writing session with a co-writer, I’d play them and sing them a few of these ideas, sort of like it was a pitch session, and whichever idea they liked the best was the one that we would finish together.”