Taylor Swift and Sombr at the 55th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala on June 11, 2026 i

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“If I look back at my entire 23-year career in music, the ups and downs, the industry battles, the trials and tribulations, the tears and the cheers and the dogpiling of doubt, the criticism, both fair and unfair, the complete loss of privacy, the world tours and the ego wars and the twists of fate, the absolute magical chaos of this path that I chose when I was too young to remember it ever being a choice at all… songwriting was the easiest thing I ever did.”

Taylor Swift became the second youngest person and the youngest woman—by nearly a decade—to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 11. Her induction, introduced by Steven Spielberg and celebrated with a performance by Sombr of her hits “Dear John” and “Cardigan,” closed out a star-studded, performance-filled gala in New York that also feted 2026 honorees Alanis Morissette, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of Kiss and Kenny Loggins, among others. John Fogerty received the SHOF’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award, and Raye received the organization’s Hal David Starlight Award.

Addressing the crowd of primarily music creatives and executives, Swift dove deep into her writing process: “Not because it didn’t take effort, it definitely did, not that it wasn’t frustrating at times, because it could be, and not that my songwriting didn’t haunt me relentlessly until I cracked the perfect internal rhyme scheme for the third line, the second verse where my teachers would call me out for not paying attention—because that definitely happened. But when I say that songwriting was the easiest part for me, I think what I mean is that it was instinctual. No one taught me how to do it,” she said.

“I had to be taught how to entertain the crowd and learn choreography and be less annoying. And navigate the industry and fiercely protect my insanity. I had to learn all of that over time through difficult lessons and massive amounts of trial and error and chaos and calamity. But songwriting for me, it’s pretty much the only thing I ever just naturally did.”

Leading up to her time on stage, which arrived at close to midnight, Swift embraced the evening with enthusiasm and grace. Accompanied by her fiance Travis Kelce, mother-in-law to be Donna Kelce, her own mother, father and brother, and Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw, she mingled with the crowd, took photos, and sang and danced through performances honoring her fellow inductees.

Among them were Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins and Goo Goo Dolls’ Johnny Rzeznik kicking it up for Kiss, and Brandi Carlile honored Morissette in song and speech. Fogerty gave the crowd a mini concert, performing timeless hits including "Proud Mary," "Fortunate Son," and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”

Hoarse from helping cheer the Knicks to their down-to-the-buzzer victory over the San Antonio Spurs the prior night, Swift didn’t perform but, fighting back tears, she paid tribute to her own home team of support.

“My parents tell me stories about driving home from taking me to see Disney movies. And noticing I was singing the songs on the way home from the film in the car. But I was changing the lyrics and the melodies to be about my own life. As a little kid, I loved to sing, I love to do children’s theater performances, but everything came together when I learned to play guitar at 12. I wrote my first song after learning my first three chords. It felt easy to work incredibly hard at this. It felt easy to nurture something I loved so much. To watch calluses form on the tips of my tiny fingers and to become a constant observer of the human condition. Because people’s feelings, passions and motivations have always fascinated me and it was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life,” she said.

“It couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother to just pick up and move our entire family from Pennsylvania to relocate to Nashville so that I could hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world. But after making obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their teen 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 also had wise words for aspiring songwriters, encouraging them to trust their instincts, value their self-worth and protect their peace:

“Positive feedback and people loving what you wrote feels incredible and I hope you get lots of it. But you need to be ready to receive negative feedback, whether you seek it out or not. It’s no longer a shock that this is how things work, but somehow it feels like I have this conversation with a young writer every other week. If you make anything awesome, someone out there is bound to say horrible things about it or twist what you meant into something completely unrecognizable to you,” she said.

“What I hope you discover is this: You can be sensitive but also durable, and you can accept that feedback and skepticism and criticism are inevitable. You can take what’s useful or constructive from that information and leave out what’s simply damaging to your creativity. No one does or should make art that appeals to everyone everywhere all the time. My favorite artists detailed and singular in its voice, therefore it can’t be digested and metabolized by everyone who experiences it in the same way.”

As for the one who had the honor of inducting her? Spielberg at first blush may seem an odd choice, but not to Swift.

“He thinks that this is the first time he has inducted me into something, but what he may not be taking into consideration is that through his decades of spellbinding storytelling, Steven Spielberg has unknowingly inducted me and countless others into his sacred club of expansive world-building. From the time he was a kid, every time he dreamed something up, he wanted to do anything humanly possible to be able to show it to you. I watched his films pivot between different genres: action, sci-fi, historical epic, to drama to comedy to romance, fantasy, to musical, and I watched him ace every single genre. And that kind of limitless creativity isn’t just inspiring to burgeoning filmmakers. Because of examples like Steven’s, I trusted my imagination regardless of if it was taking me somewhere new and uncharted,” she said.

“I think now more than ever, in an industry that seems to be consumed by metrics, data, analytics and we’re trying to predict whether something will trend or not, writers need to trust their human intuition. And I think the thousands of hours I’ve spent lovingly working at this craft have taught me to really be able to identify the ideas that jump out at me, sparkle and linger, the ones that matter to me the most.”

After pouring praise on Sombr, whom she said will be at the top of her Spotify Wrapped this year, Swift added: “If I had advice for young artists… I would say you really have to prioritize what you love down to your very core. Because you’ll need that if your song ever gets heard by the public. Or the critics. Or the haters posing as critics or the people who are chronically online or the robots posing as people who are chronically online."

"Songwriters have a real balancing act they have to conduct every day because inherently we’re supposed to let it all in, feel deeply and sensitive to the point of near delusion and then reflect those feelings and illusions back to the world in the form of a three-and-a-half minute sonic landscape. Or a bop, or a folk tale, or a battle cry, or a 10-minute coming of age song about a scarf.”