Taylor Swift has become the second youngest person and the youngest woman to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The honour was presented by Steven Spielberg on 11 June, at Swift’s request.
The 36-year-old Shake It Off and Look What You Made Me Do singer was emotional as received her recognition in front of music industry producers and executives.
“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,” said Swift in her acceptance speech.
“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.”