Taylor Swift praised Sombr, quoted Yellowstone and tearfully thanked her family in her acceptance speech at the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The pop megastar, 36, was honoured on Thursday night (June 11) at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel, becoming the second-youngest inductee in the history of the institution, after Stevie Wonder, who was 33 at the time of his induction.
Swift asked Steven Spielberg to give her introductory speech, and she attended alongside her parents, her fiancé Travis Kelce and his mother, and Sombr also paid tribute to her at the ceremony, performing her songs ‘Cardigan’ and ‘Dear John’.
During her 21-minute speech, she returned the favour, speaking highly of Sombr. “His writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious, and I love that feeling,” she said. “He’s gonna be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year, guaranteed. It’s locked.”
“It’s in the bag. A lot of my late-night debates with my friends about the state of the music industry involve me saying very loudly, ‘Sombr is the future, and he does it all on his own and he doesn’t need that AI! The kids are fine!’”
She then invoked the TV drama Yellowstone by throwing it over to the next generation, adding: “It’s the one constant in life, son: you build something worth having, somebody’s gonna try to take it.”
Swift also became visibly emotional when she began to thank her parents for their part in her success, reflecting on how they relocated from Pennsylvania to Nashville when she was 14 so that she could “hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world”.
“It couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother to just pick up and move our entire family,” she said, choking back tears.
“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.”
In his induction speech, Spielberg, whose film Disclosure Day was released this week, said he was “honoured” to “introduce the youngest female ever to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame”, describing her as “a woman who has no peer when it comes to shattering records and a writer, singer and storyteller”.
He continued: “A singular artist and a genuine phenomenon whose place in our culture rivals that of the composers of the American Songbook, Lennon and McCartney of the ’60s, and the singer-songwriters of the 1970s like Carole King and Stevie ‘Let’s Go’ Nicks.”
“I asked AI if it could tell me how many words have been written about Taylor Swift. And you know what? It couldn’t tell me,” he continued.
“Then I asked it, how many words have been written by Taylor Swift? And it couldn’t tell me that either. And I just thought, wow, she is such a force that the depth of her achievements [defies] AI. I should have known that something that starts with ‘artificial’ wouldn’t have a clue. Because no algorithm can replace the soul of a true original who defies the status quo.”
Swift’s new song ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ was written specifically for Toy Story 5 and was released last week after weeks and months of speculation. She also performed the song live for the first time at the premiere, and duetted with Randy Newman on ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me’.
