Taylor Swift Becomes Youngest Member of Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame at 36

Taylor Swift, 36, became the youngest-ever inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame at a Monday ceremony held at the Music City Center.

Former tourmate Brad Paisley delivered the induction. Lainey Wilson performed a stripped-back version of "Love Story" in keeping with the Hall's tradition that inductees do not perform themselves, but hear their songs sung by other notable artists.

Swift used her speech to praise the city that launched her career. "There is no music community like this music community," she said, per Rolling Stone. "I know. I checked all the communities."

She joined an induction class that included Lyle Lovett, Bruce Channel, Shawn Camp and Lee Thomas Miller, along with the late J.I. Allison of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. George Strait received the Career Maker Award, an honor only one other artist has previously received, recognizing what he has done for others performing their material.

What did Swift say about her start?

Swift recalled signing with Sony Publishing at 14. "I was lucky enough to get a publishing deal with Sony Publishing when I was 14, and I just hit the ground running," she told the audience. "I was like a sponge, and I have really curly hair and it was yellow, so I kind of looked like a sponge too."

Paisley, in his introduction, remembered watching her rise. "All of us were like, 'How is this teenager doing this? How is she so brilliant?' And then she goes off and really put her feelings into something that is 100% hers and writes the 'Speak Now' album all by herself," he said. "It's an amazing thing to watch her evolution from somebody who realized this all starts with a song to (being able to) take that exact thing and change the world with it."

Swift answered with a prank story from the summer amphitheater tour when she opened for Paisley between her first two albums. "We've been estranged since 2007. I think you know why. Crickets," she said. "He took a tour prank too far. Filled my entire tour bus with live crickets. Thousands of them." She described months of sleepless nights, considering "buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem," before conceding: "I think we can let bygones be bygones."

What did Nashville give her?

Swift structured the serious portion of her speech around the three words of the honor's name: Nashville, Songwriters and Fame. She called Nashville "the place where all the wisdom that I wished to acquire existed in one place. … And it ended up being all of that and more. It ended up being everything."

She described fame as "a byproduct of my love for music," adding that the memories she returns to for a sense of normalcy come from her early Nashville years. Songwriting sessions taught her "which ideas are worth fighting for (and) which ideas are worth letting go of," she said, and taught her that songwriters, despite superhuman empathy, "are just people too. And they are people who in a lot of ways raised me and guided me through my formative years."

She named the figures from those years: Catherine at the front desk of Jody Williams Music and Catherine's then-boyfriend, future husband Eric Church; frequent collaborator Liz Rose; and Nathan Chapman, who played every instrument on her demos and later produced her first album. "I am shocked and stunned to say that as of a couple days ago, that album is 20 years old," Swift said.

After Wilson's performance, Swift returned the favor: "I've had her new single on repeat. It just puts me in the best mood. It's called 'Kinda Love It.' Check it out."

"Nashville is the place that honed and polished the thing about myself and the thing about my life that I am the most proud of and the most passionate about," Swift said in closing. "It just feels like one of those amazing Nashville moments I'm going to revisit on a rainy day."

The honor arrives four months after her June induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York, where she was likewise the youngest writer ever recognized.