“From the 20-year Contemporary Songwriter-Artist category, we have a Pennsylvania native who began writing songs and playing guitar as a preteen. Relocating with her family to Hendersonville, Tennessee in 2004, she soon signed with Sony/ATV Tree publishing, making her, at age 14, the youngest writer in that company's history. Shortly thereafter, she signed with Big Machine Records, which in 2006, released her self-titled debut album that included the song Teardrops On My Guitar, which was a 2008 BMI Country Song of the Year. Her follow-up project, Fearless, became the most-awarded country album of all time, and featured the singles White Horse, which was the 2010 Grammy winner for Best Country Song, Love Story, BMI's Country Song of the Year in 2009 and their Pop Song of the Year in 2010, and You Belong With me, BMI's 2010 Country Song of the Year. More hits followed this writer's path to superstar, including Mean, the 2012 Grammy winner for Best Country Song, Blank Space, All Too Well (the 10-minute version from the short film), which was the 2023 Grammy winner for Best Music Video, Anti-Hero, and Cruel Summer. In 2017, her solo-written Better Man, by Little Big Town, was Grammy-nominated and earned the CMA Song of the Year. Writing or cowriting every song across her 12 studio projects, she is the only artist in Grammy award-history to win Album of the Year four times. Other honors include a win for BMI Country Songwriter of the Year, six wins for BMI Pop Songwriter of the Year, seven wins for NSAI Songwriter-Artist of the Year —whew, I love these and she was also NSAI's Songwriter-Artist of the Decade in 2010 and 2019. In 2026, this writer became the youngest female inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York, and soon she will become our youngest inductee ever. We are proud to welcome, say it with me now, Taylor Swift to the class of 2026.”
