During Taylor Swift’s 21-minute acceptance speech when being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on Thursday, the star quoted Yellowstone‘s John Dutton when sharing words of wisdom 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 chronically online, or the robots posing as people who are chronically online,” said Swift in her heartfelt message to hopeful artists watching. “Songwriters have a real balancing act that they have to conduct every day, because inherently we’re supposed to let it all in — feel deeply and sensitive to the point of your delusion, and then reflect those feelings and delusions back to the world in the form of a three-and-a-half minute sonic landscape or a bop or a folktale or a battle cry or a 10-minute-coming-of-age-song about a scarf.”
She then asked the audience gathered at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City to “allow me to now make a hard pivot and pull out a quote I love from the show Yellowstone.” For the occasion, Swift quoted John Dutton, the Montana rancher played by Kevin Costner, and in an accent said, “It’s the one constant in life, son. You build something worth having, somebody’s gonna try to take it.”
Swift used the quote to “refer to your self-worth, your peace of mind, and your singular vision as a creator.” “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 continued. “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 art is detailed and singular in its voice, therefore it can’t be digested and metabolized by everyone who experiences it in the same way.”
She added, “As writers, we can hope to meet people where they are in their lives. You can’t ever orchestrate or force the encounter. You just have to hope that in some exquisite happenstance, you bump into them on the same path at the same time. That somehow amidst the noise of life, a line we wrote, or a melody that we crafted cuts through.”
Elsewhere in her speech, Swift held back tears when thanking her family for their support throughout her career. “It couldn’t have been easy for my parents and brother to 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.” Addressing them directly, she said, “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.”
Swift, at 36, is the youngest female artist to be inducted into the prestigious institution, and the second youngest artist to earn the recognition. The Grammy winner is just three years older than Stevie Wonder was when he became the youngest Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee in 1983 at the age of 33.
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