Taylor Swift praised Sombr, referenced Yellowstone and became emotional while thanking her family during 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 ever in the institution’s history, behind Stevie Wonder, who was 33 when he was inducted.
Taylor Swift invited Steven Spielberg to deliver her introduction speech, and she arrived with her parents, her fiancé Travis Kelce and his mother, while Sombr also honoured her at the event by performing her tracks ‘Cardigan’ and ‘Dear John’.
Across a 21 minute acceptance speech, she returned the compliment by speaking warmly about 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 also brought up the TV series Yellowstone, using it as a passing reflection on legacy and competition, adding: “It’s the one constant in life, son: you build something worth having, somebody’s gonna try to take it.”
Taylor Swift also became noticeably emotional when she started thanking her parents for their role in her career path, looking back on how they moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville when she was 14 so 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, fighting 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 remarks, Steven Spielberg, whose film Disclosure Day has just been released this week, said he felt “honoured” to “introduce the youngest female ever to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame”, calling her “a woman who has no peer when it comes to shattering records and a writer, singer and storyteller”.
He went on to say: “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.”
Taylor Swift’s new track ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ was created specifically for Toy Story 5 and arrived last week after months of speculation. She also debuted the song live for the first time at the premiere, and performed it as a duet with Randy Newman on ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me’.
