“And she talked in her vows about how, in high school, he was like, the star athlete, but the kind of guy who would go and sit at the table with the less popular kids and keep them company and be nice to them when they were being bullied—the kind of person that she wished she could’ve known when she was in high school. Really touching, very personal, and very heartfelt.”
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Two guests who spoke to NBC News said the night included performances by Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks, in addition to a raffle that featu
For days, details surrounding the wedding between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce remained hidden behind a veil of mystery. But now that the lovers’ matrimony has been officially confirmed by their camp, guests are opening up about the event.
Guests, including musicians, directors and more, have started to share their impressions of the nuptials on social media. Two people who were at the star-studded bash exclusively shared with NBC News details on how the extraordinary July 3 night at New York’s Madison Square Garden unfolded — and it certainly sounds as fantastical as many had predicted.
The entire wedding, the guests said, was a “pinch me moment.”
So far, not much about the ceremony has been publicly revealed by the couple themselves. The pair’s representatives said in a statement sent to NBC News that the nuptials were officiated by friend and comedian Adam Sandler. The pair also opted against a traditional wedding party, the statement said. Instead, the musician’s brother Austin Swift served as the “Man of Honor,” while Kelce’s sibling Jason Kelce served as best man.
According to the two who spoke to NBC News, guests first entered the venue and walked through a tunnel that featured photos of Swift and Kelce throughout the years, from childhood through their relationship together. Then, guests stepped into what was the couples’ “Secret Garden, the two people both said.
The ceremony itself, the two guests added, was particularly moving. According to the statement from the couple’s representative, Swift and Kelce wore looks that were created by fashion house Christian Dior Haute Couture. The two guests mentioned that both the bride and groom wore white.
Swift and Kelce personally wrote their own vows, the two guests said. Swift’s vows featured a bit of her singing. And the exchange between the couple elicited tears from those in the crowd, the two attendees said.
“You would think the bride would be the one crying more, but it was actually Travis that was more emotional,” one of the attendees said.
The magic didn’t stop there. The reception was one to remember, with performances from Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks, the two guests said. While Swift did not perform at the wedding, she did so at the rehearsal dinner the night before with Kelce as the couple sang their favorite rock song together, the two attendees added.
The two guests also shared other details, raving about the food that was served that night, which was from the couple’s favorite New York City restaurants. One standout aspect of the wedding was the games that attendees were invited to play, the two guests said. Through the games, people could win tickets to be submitted into a raffle. The two people explained that raffle items — which included multiple designer bags — also featured a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, the storied car that the couple rode together on their first date. It’s unclear who ended up winning the prizes.
Famous attendees — which included Tom Hanks and Jennifer Lopez, according to the two guests — have begun to share snippets from the night to remember as well. Singer Fergie, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, actress-singer Selena Gomez and others have shared their “Tayvis” wedding day outfits.
Director Joseph Kahn, who socialized with fellow director Steven Spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw, said he had a “wonderful time.”
“What I will say about the wedding was it was so much funnier and emotional than expected, and as big as it was, it also felt very intimate,” Kahn wrote in an Instagram post. “Wishing your beautiful family and future family endless happiness!”
In a July 4 post on X, country star Kelsea Ballerini described the event as “the most beautiful wedding,” adding that she is “still crying and dancing.”
Sportscaster Rich Eisen, who attended with his wife and fellow sportscaster Suzy Shuster, had high praise for the wedding as well.
“Storybook doesn’t do the expression of love we witnessed justice,” Eisen wrote in an Instagram post.
And actress Niecy Nash, who went to the nuptials with her wife, musician Jessica Betts, had one word to sum up the event of the year.
“Wowwwwwww‼️ is the best way to describe it,” Nash wrote on social media. “From beginning to end no detail was spared! Congrats!”
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have donated $26 million to charities, a rep announced, prior to their wedding.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have donated $26 million to at least 20 charities this week, a representative announced, in advance of a wedding reported to be taking place this weekend in New York.
The pair have still not officially acknowledged that nuptials are about to take place, and even the announcement of the charitable efforts does not mention the wedding, though it’s clear that the donations are part of this week’s celebrating.
The 20 charities include a number of food banks in different cities, educational programs and children’s hospitals or medical programs.
The announcement simply says, “This week, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift donated $26 million to charities across the United States. They include the following…”
The list of 20 is as follows:
City Harvest, New York City
Food Bank for NYC
New York Cares
Los Angeles Regional Food Bank
Harvesters – The Community Food Network, Kansas City, MO
The Store, Nashville, TN
Helping Harvest, Reading, PA
Rhode Island Community Food Bank
Feeding America, National
ASPCA, National
Dolly Parton”s Imagination Library, National
Grammy In The Schools, National
Education Through Music, New York, NY
Answer The Call, New York, NY
Musical Mentors, New York, NY
After-School All- Stars, New York, NY
After-School All-Stars, Cleveland, OH
MSK Kids, the pediatric cancer program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Children & Teen and Adolescents & Young Adult (AYA) Programs, Hassenfeld Children’s Hosipal at NYU Langone
It looks like the local news stations are getting the good info:https://abc7.com/post/2-day-taylor-swifttravis-kelce-wedding-planned-madison-square-garden-nyc-1000-guests-expected-abc-sources-say/19422243/
The first begins Thursday evening at 6 p.m. It is meant for about 100 people, the sources said.
The second begins Friday afternoon with cocktail hour at 4 p.m. The event is not scheduled to end until 4 a.m. Saturday morning and is expected to include about 1000 people, the sources said.
Both will be strict no-phone events for everyone inside the venue, to include guests, vendors and security personnel, according to the sources.
The event company has obtained permits to close portions of West 31 St. and West 33 St. for the duration of the events. Those streets will be closed to both vehicles and pedestrians, the sources said.
There will be tents and canopies erected to prevent the public from catching a glimpse of arrivals and departures, but, at least for the moment, 7th and 8th Avenues will remain open to pedestrians and traffic, the sources said.
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jesschoismyth: Throughout my career, I’ve seen the incredible heights female leaders are expected to reach, which makes it a true privilege to champion them at every opportunity. I am so immensely proud of the female leadership team on Toy Story 5. Being part of their journey and watching everyone in action has been an absolute honor. Career highlight sneaking off to New York for a covert screening. I meant every word when I wrote this. If Jessie were not but a tiny toy… ❤️🧸 (x)
Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You,” from ‘Toy Story 5,’ debuts as her 15th No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
[excerpts]
Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” gallops in at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The single from Toy Story 5, inspired by the film’s cowgirl heroine Jessie, is Swift’s 15th career leader.
Among highlights of the song’s instant coronation, Swift breaks out of a tie with Drake and Rihanna to claim sole possession of the third-most No. 1s in the Hot 100’s history, after only The Beatles (20) and Mariah Carey (19).
The track is also Swift’s ninth No. 1 Hot 100 debut, as she passes Ariana Grande for the most among women, and her 70th top 10, extending her record for the most by a woman artist
Plus, the song is just the third Hot 100 No. 1 ever from an animated Disney movie, and the first from its Pixar studio, following the ensemble “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” from Encanto, in 2022 and Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle’s “A Whole New World,” from Aladdin, in 1993.
“I Knew It, I Knew You” concurrently launches at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, marking Swift’s milestone 10th leader.
‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ Streams, Airplay & Sales
“I Knew It, I Knew You,” on Pixar/Walt Disney/Republic Records, with country radio promotion by MCA Nashville, opens with 27.2 million official streams, 46.7 million radio airplay audience impressions and 87,000 sold in the U.S. from its June 5 release through June 11.
The track debuts as Swift’s 11th No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart; at No. 7 on Radio Songs; and as her record-extending 32nd No. 1 on Digital Song Sales, with 70,000 of its overall sales from downloads. It also sold 17,000 via three CD single options: its original, acoustic and piano versions that shipped to customers during the tracking week.
As for the tune’s Radio Songs entrance, Swift becomes the first artist with multiple top 10 debuts since the chart became an all-format ranking in December 1998. Here are the select songs to start in the tier:
No. 7, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” Taylor Swift, June 20, 2026
No. 7, “The Fate of Ophelia,” Taylor Swift, Oct. 18, 2025
No. 6, “Lift Me Up,” Rihanna, Nov. 12, 2022
No. 4, “Easy on Me,” Adele, Oct. 30, 2021
No. 6, “Born This Way,” Lady Gaga, Feb. 26, 2011
No. 9, “All For You,” Janet, March 17, 2001
“I Knew It, I Knew You” debuts at No. 8 on Country Airplay, No. 9 on Adult Contemporary and in the top 20 on Pop Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay.
Swift’s 15th Hot 100 No. 1
Upping her count to 15 Hot 100 No. 1s, Swift now solely has the third-most in the chart’s 67-year history.
Most Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s:
20, The Beatles
19, Mariah Carey
15, Taylor Swift
14, Rihanna
14, Drake
13, Michael Jackson
12, Madonna
12, The Supremes
11, Whitney Houston
10, Ariana Grande
10, Janet Jackson
10, Bruno Mars
10, Stevie Wonder
Here’s a rundown of Swift’s Hot 100 No. 1s:
“I Knew It, I Knew You,” one week at No. 1 to date, June 20, 2026*
“Opalite,” one, Feb. 28, 2026
“The Fate of Ophelia,” 10 weeks, beginning Oct. 18, 2025*
“Fortnight,” feat. Post Malone, two, May 4, 2024*
“Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) [From the Vault],” one, Nov. 11, 2023*
“Cruel Summer,” four, Oct. 28, 2023
“Anti-Hero,” eight, Nov. 5, 2022*
“All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” one, Nov. 27, 2021*
“Willow,” one, Dec. 26, 2020*
“Cardigan,” one, Aug. 8, 2020*
“Look What You Made Me Do,” three, Sept. 16, 2017
“Bad Blood,” feat. Kendrick Lamar, one, June 6, 2015
“Blank Space,” seven, Nov. 29, 2014
“Shake It Off,” four, Sept. 6, 2014*
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” three, Sept. 1, 2012
*No. 1 debut
With 10 Hot 100 No. 1s in the 2020s, Swift widens her lead over Drake and Ariana Grande (eight each) for the most this decade.
Swift also becomes just the fourth artist with a double-digit total of Hot 100 No. 1s in a single decade, with her 10 in the ‘20s following Mariah Carey’s 14 in the 1990s and The Beatles’ 18 and The Supremes’ 12 in the ‘60s.
Plus, as “I Knew It, I Knew You,” the 1,194th No. 1 in the Hot 100’s history, and the 93rd single to debut at the summit, follows Swift’s triumph with “Opalite” in February, she’s the first artist with two new No. 1s this year.
“I Knew It, I Knew You” is also Swift’s ninth career No. 1 Hot 100 debut, as she passes Grande for the most among women. Overall, Drake has a leading 10.
Swift’s 15th Hot 100 No. 1 is also her 70th top 10, dating to her first, “Change,” in August 2008.
Most Billboard Hot 100 Top 10s:
90, Drake
70, Taylor Swift
38, Madonna
35, The Beatles
32, Rihanna
30, Michael Jackson
29, Elton John
28, Mariah Carey
28, Stevie Wonder
27, Justin Bieber
27, Janet Jackson
26, Lil Wayne
25, Elvis Presley (whose career start predated the Hot 100’s inception)
“I Knew It, I Knew You” is also Swift’s 178th top 40 Hot 100 hit and her 277th entry overall. The marks are the most among women and second among all acts only to Drake’s 241 and 402, respectively.
“I Knew It, I Knew You” is the third Hot 100 No. 1 ever from an animated Disney film, and the first from its Pixar studio — as well as the first to debut in the top spot and Swift’s first leader from a movie. It follows the ensemble “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” from Encanto, in 2022 and Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle’s “A Whole New World,” from Aladdin, in 1993.
Toy Story 5 premieres wide in theaters June 19, following its June 9 Hollywood preview, at which Swift gave “I Knew It, I Knew You” its first live performance.
“Writing this song felt like a musical departure and coming home at the same time,” Swift shared June 1 on Instagram. “Creating something for Jessie was a new challenge and also felt like second nature all at once. And being a @toystory kid from the age of 5 til now … is an adventure I plan to be on, to infinity and beyond.”
The song marks Pixar’s first No. 1 Hot 100 placement, Walt Disney Records’ second — after “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — and MCA Nashville’s third.
Republic, with the REPUBLIC Collective the top Hot 100 label for five years running, links its third consecutive new No. 1, following Ariana Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which debuted on top a week earlier, and Drake’s “Janice STFU,” which led in its first two chart weeks before that. The company is the first ever to notch three Hot 100 No. 1 debuts in as few as four weeks.
Swift’s ‘Knew’-est No. 1 as a Writer & Producer
Swift cowrote and coproduced “I Knew It, I Knew You” with Jack Antonoff. She has now cowritten all 15 of her Hot 100 No. 1s and coproduced nine.
The youngest ever inductee to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, as of June 11, Swift ties for the seventh-most Hot 100 No. 1s all-time among writers.
Most Hot 100 No. 1s by Writers:
32, Paul McCartney
30, Max Martin
26, John Lennon
18, Mariah Carey
18, Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald
16, Barry Gibb
15, Drake
15, James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III
15, Brian Holland
15, Terry Lewis
15, Taylor Swift
14, Lamont Dozier
Antonoff earns his 11th Hot 100 No. 1 as both a writer and producer. It’s his sixth and seventh in those respective roles with Swift, a chart-topping partnership that they began with “Look What You Made Me Do” and had most recently expanded with “Fortnight.”
Swift’s 10th Hot Country Songs No. 1
“I Knew It, I Knew You” concurrently bounds in at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, as Swift’s milestone 10th leader. Here’s a recap:
“I Knew It, I Knew You,” one week at No. 1 to date, June 20, 2026*
“All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” one, Nov. 27, 2021*
“Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” one, Feb. 27, 2021*
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” 10, beginning Oct. 20, 2012
“Ours,” one, March 31, 2012
“Sparks Fly,” one, Nov. 26, 2011
“You Belong With Me,” two, Aug. 22, 2009
“Love Story,” two, Nov. 22, 2008
“Should’ve Said No,” two, Aug. 23, 2008
“Our Song,” six Dec. 22, 2007
*No. 1 debut
(Of Swift’s 10 Hot Country Songs No. 1s, she has tallied four since the chart adopted its current multimetric methodology in October 2012; before that, the list solely measured country radio airplay.)
Dating to her first Hot Country Songs No. 1 — and even with her pivot to pop with her fifth proper studio set, 1989, in 2014 — Swift is one of six acts with 10 or more leaders on the chart in that nearly 19-year span, joining Luke Bryan, Morgan Wallen (12 each), Blake Shelton (11), Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood (10 each). Swift and Underwood, thus, have the most among women since “Our Song” hit No. 1.
Meanwhile, “I Knew It, I Knew You” is the 32nd hit to have topped both the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs, dating to 1958 (when the latter became the country genre’s singular Billboard chart). It’s the 12th so far in the 2020s, the most of any decade.
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Aimee Mayo is one of the writers Taylor worked with in Nashville when she was young and they are still good friends and she said in this pod that she saw Andrea at a Rita Wilson concert backstage and she asked Andrea what she thought of Travis and Andrea said "I love him"
Fork found in the kitchen lmao 😂
Aaaah what a nice tidbit! Thank you for sharing with me!
"Hi. The quality of my speaking voice is the product of two things that I’m not sorry for. One is that I went to, I was lucky enough to go to a Knicks game last night. I screamed for 100% of it, and then I got home and I was like, ‘You gotta stop screaming. You’re screaming too much. You’re screaming instead of talking. You’re too excited.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to scream tonight.’ And then I got to witness the amazing performances that I saw tonight, and then I just kept screaming. I just never stopped screaming. And so this is what you get, and again, I make no apologies for that. I’ve had a blast. Tonight has been amazing.
I want to begin by thanking the person who introduced and inducted me tonight, and thinks 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, from action, to sci-fi, to historical epic, to drama, to comedy, 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 of Steven’s, I trusted my imagination, regardless of it was taking me somewhere new and uncharted, and then every time I dreamed something up, I wanted to do everything humanly possibly to be able to play it for you.
A few months ago when the Songwriters Hall of Fame asked me about my heroes and the creatives who shaped my storytelling and who I might want to present this award to me, I said Steven’s name. And about an hour later to my absolute delight, I ended up on the phone with him and his legendarily effervescent wife, Kate Capshaw, who is here tonight. And he was telling me, yes, absolutely, he would be thrilled to be here. I was completely blown away because the man has a massive film called Disclosure Day that’s coming out at midnight tonight, and he’s still going to agree and show up to do this for me a few hours before it comes out. Wouldn’t that be impossibly hard to balance? Wouldn’t that be too difficult, scheduling-wise? I’m trying to give him an out. At which point, Kate said something I’ll never forget. She said, ‘Good and true things are easy.’ And 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 criticisms, 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. 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 of the book where my teachers called me out in class 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. I had to be taught how to entertain a crowd, and learn choreography, and be less annoying, and navigate the industry, and fiercely protect my own sanity. 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, was pretty much the only thing I ever just naturally did.
My parents tell me stories about driving home from taking me to see Disney movies, and in the theaters, they were noticing I was singing the songs from the film on the way home, 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 loved 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 always fascinated me, and it was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life. But it couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother—I’m good [crying]—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 it became obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their tween daughter was going through, they uprooted their entire lives to move me to Music City. And even though words are kind of supposed to 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 doing it.
In Nashville, I took meetings, and I played acoustic shows until I was able to secure a publishing deal. I got signed when I was 14—oh, thanks! And I got the chance to work with incredibly wise and experienced cowriters. People like Liz Rose, Troy Verges, Hillary Lindsey, Robert Ellis Orrall, Angelo, The Warren Brothers, and the late but so very loved Brett James. So I’d written over 100 songs on my own at that point, but this would be my first experience cowriting. My parents have raised me to be overprepared, show up early, never assume the world owes you anything. And I might have been 14 years old, but I didn’t want anyone in a professional setting to treat me like a baby, or for these songwriters to think that I expected them to write songs for me to slap my name on. So at this point, I started to approach songwriting like a full-time vocation. And that didn’t mean just showing up to my appointments and hoping the ideas would show up too. It meant spending nearly all of my free time writing ideas in preparation for my writing sessions, and then stopping myself at a certain point to allow my cowriters to later weigh in. So some of these ideas were fifty percent done, some were seventy-five percent done, some were just a hook with lyrics and a melody or a chorus. I stockpiled them, so that when I went into a writing session with a cowriter, I’d play them and sing them a few of these ideas, sort of like it was a pitch session, and whichever idea they liked the best is the one that we would finish together. I kept long lists of words that I loved, and I added to it every time I thought of a new one. I developed a serious fixation on alliterations and juxtaposition. And I wrote poems when I didn’t have the right melody yet.
When I was inspired by my own life, my curiosities about the world, or my very dramatic but extremely dire crushes on boys at school who had never even once talked to me, I wrote about that. And if I wasn’t inspired by my own life, I’d use other methods to spark my imagination. I figured, if the idea doesn’t come to you, you have to become your own search party and go find it. Oftentimes, I’d put a movie on. I’d pause a scene, and try to write a song from each character’s perspectives—even the villain. I’d explore what they were going through and try to say it in a vernacular that that character might use. And this is how I learned that every person has a self-constructed justification system that they live by, and we each get to decide what choices we’re willing to condone ourselves. We each decide what we see as good and true, fair and right. And so with my metaphorical Mary Poppins bag of hooks, choruses, and bridges, and my nonmetaphorical backpack from sophomore year of high school, I’d walk into my writing sessions on Music Row.
One of my favorite stories from this time in my life is when I got a chance to write with one of my favorite songwriters of all time, Craig Wiseman. Yep. Craig is an absolute savant of a writer, but he’s also one of the funniest people I’ve ever met too, so I know that I can tell this story. I brought in about five different semi-formed songs that I thought were really strong. Because it was Craig Wiseman, I led my pitch with a song I really thought was special. It was pretty much done except for a few lines in the bridge. So filled with nervous anticipation, I played it on guitar and sang it for him, and when I finished, he very kindly told me tht he thought it was good but he didn’t really get it, and he’d love to hear the other ideas I brought. A few songs later, we landed on one that resonated better with him, and we had a fantastic writing session. It turns out, you really can and should meet some of your heroes. But years later, we still look back on that session and we laugh about that first idea that I had played for him. I had ended up going home and finishing the song on my own later that night. It was called Love Story. Finishing that song that night was me trusting my instincts as a writer, regardless of any feedback or information I had about what other people’s take on it might be. I think now more than ever, in an industry that seems to be consumed by metrics, data, and analytics, and we’re all trying to predict whether something will trend or not, like, 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 and sparkle and linger, the ones that matter to me the most.
I have to say thank you to Sombr for that perfect performance. And his writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious, and I love that feeling. He’s going to be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year, guaranteed, like 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 AI. The kids are fine.’ And so obviously, Shane is a very well-adjusted person and artist, and doesn’t need any of my advice at all. There are so many incredible writers that I love who have come into their own recently, and if I had advice for young artists, though, who should perhaps be interested in it, I would say that 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 that they have to conduct every day, because inherently, we’re supposed to let it all in, feel deeply and sensitively to the point of near-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 ballad, or a folk tale, or a battle cry, or a 10-minute coming-of-age song about a scarf.
So it’s hard to harden yourself to certain brutal elements of this world, but allow me to now make a hard pivot and pull out a quote I love from the show Yellowstone: ‘When a father says to his son, it’s the one constant in life, son. You build something worth having; somebody’s gonna try to take it.’ Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. So, John Dutton was talking about a ranch, but I’m using this quote to refer to your self-worth, your peace of mind, and your singular vision as a creator. 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 sometimes it feels like I have this conversation with a young writer every other week. If you make anything awesome, someone out there is going to say horrible things about it, or twist what you meant into something completely unrecognizable to you. 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. I’m very frequently told by people how they feel about my music, that they never really got my music until they got their heart broken, or started driving their daughter to school every day, or until I made an alternative album in the pandemic called folklore, or that they only like the hits, or that they only liked the ones that weren’t hits, or that they don’t like any of it at all. But it doesn’t feel uncomfortable for me to get feedback of all sorts because I know where I stand regarding the work I’ve made.
As writers, we can only hope to meet people where they are in their lives, but 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, and they hear it and they feel something, that they get chills or feel lighter or think of someone they love. Our goal is to elicit that glint of recognition in another human being, because something that felt good and true to us feels good and true to them in the same time. And in that moment, when someone blurts out, ‘I love this song,’ it was easy.
Before I go, there are so many people who helped me get to this podium, who vouched for my writing and cared about my perspective before anyone cared about my name. And then the fans came along, and they wanted to hear my stories, my prose, my hooks, my heartache, and nothing, nothing delights and surprises me more than the fact that 20 years after my first song came out, they still want to read the next chapter. Nothing makes me happier than when someone tells me that they used to listen to my music with their parent, and now, decades later, they listen to it with their own child. [crying] I’m good. Or that they listen to it with their best friend, or when a couple tells me that Love Story is their song, or somebody does a cute little dance to The Fate of Ophelia, or I hear people in different countries singing Opalite in their own accents, or someone tells me that the song Enchanted gets their baby to stop crying. It’s, I’m humbled by the ways that fans have immortalized my songs in their own individual ways, allowing them to be the underscore of some of their real life expeditions on this Earth, the magnificent moments, as important to me as the seemingly mundane. Lastly, I know that when it comes to legacy, there are so many songwriters who have had such remarkable careers before me, and I know that the Songwriters Hall of Fame could have chosen any of these deserving and brilliant writers to receive this honor this year, but you chose to include me in this group of exemplary songwriters to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, class of 2026 tonight. So I want to thank the voters for celebrating and honoring the best and trust parts of my life. I will be forever grateful. Have a good night guys! Thank you!"
— Taylor's induction speech into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 11, 2026 (x)
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