On Taylor Swift’s Induction to the Songwriters Hall of Fame
Taylor Swift? A Hall of Famer at the age of 36, and for songwriting no less? That’s what the Songwriters Hall of Fame has decreed, with Swift being inducted in a class that also includes Alanis Morissette, Kenny Loggins, and Kiss bandmates Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons for 2026.
They’ll all be honored in a ceremony on June 11th in New York City. Though some eager beavers proclaimed Swift the youngest ever living Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee upon the news, that distinction remains in the ownership of Stevie Wonder who was inducted at the age of 33 in 1983.
Nonetheless, it’s a very swift rise to Hall of Fame status for Taylor, who’s making us all feel old by realizing she’s now in her mid thirties. But is she really Hall of Fame worthy? Do all her pop songs really stand up to the scrutiny a Hall of Fame induction deserves? Is there still a bad taste in the mouth of country curmudgeons after she skipped out on the genre for the excesses of pop after helping to turn country more pop herself?
The answer is that of course Taylor Swift deserves this honor, and now is probably a fair time. She was only 16 when she was singing about Tim McGraw and teardrops on her guitar. Yep, that was 20 years ago this year, which is why she is eligible for Halls of Fame in 2026. And yes (gulp), that also means she’s officially eligible for the Country Music Hall of Fame too, though I wouldn’t hold your breath for that one just yet. The backlog there is so bad, it could be a decade before that’s even a concern.
Though the great Liz Rose was listed as a co-writer for many of the songs on those first couple of Taylor Swift albums, Rose herself says she was more just dotting I’s and crossing T’s, with Swift doing the lion’s share of the work. Then came Taylor’s 2010 album Speak Now where Swift wrote every single song herself, and co-produced the album while she was between the ages of 18 and 20.
Is Taylor Swift good for a bad song or three, and material that isn’t exactly Hall of Fame worthy? Of course. What’s that new song she’s got about her fiance’s junk? No doubt you’ll have some seething over this distinction simply because they’re tired of Swift clogging up their information feeds. And now your favorite country music website is even talking about her again.
But the simple fact is the American Music consumer is so much more savvy about all of the separate things that go into making a “song” than they were before the Taylor Swift era. Previously, the average passive music listener didn’t understand many performers had someone else write songs for them. Swift took it a step further by making her songs hyper personal, and challenging her audience to look for Easter eggs in her lyrics.
Taylor Swift very much seeded the age of the songwriter that we’re now living in, with so many of the biggest songwriters at the moment specifically citing Swift as an influence, even, if not especially the sad bastard Zach Bryan-style guys.
And incidentally, if we’re judging Swift by who else is going into the Hall of Fame this year, how can you say the KISS guys deserve it but Swift doesn’t? Alanis Morissette is great, but it’s really the tale of one big album. Country fans should be more exercised about why there isn’t a country songwriter being inducted in this class. But they did induct Cindy Walker in 2024, so they bought some latitude for a few years there.
As for Taylor Swift though? It’s not just about the songs. It’s about her ambassadorship for songwriters everywhere that in previous eras were laboring away in the shadows—folks like Walter “Baby Love” Afanasieff, Terry Britten, Graham Lyle from Scotland, and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, who are all also 2026 Songwriter Hall of Fame inductees, but few reported on because they’re not household names.
Taylor Swift made songwriting cool. And even if she’s no longer cool to certain segments of the population because it’s easy to hate on front-running billionaires that are constantly clogging people’s information feeds, she deserves this accolade, and in the first year of her eligibility.
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January 25, 2026 @ 10:32 am
Just because she doesn’t write stuff that we are interested in listening to doesn’t mean we can’t recognize that she is a serious songwriter both in volume of output and quality. 12 whole albums of work? 14 Grammys? 54 million albums sold? And she wrote basically all of it? That’s rare air for any artist or songwriter. I think the only real question if which hall(s) of fame decide she belongs.
January 25, 2026 @ 11:15 am
“basically all of it”?? Taylor wrote every single song. Some had co-writers and some she wrote alone but that doesn’t change the fact that she wrote every single song. As door your suggestion that you don’t want to listen – that’s only because you haven’t. I’m a 70 y/i fan and I’ve watched music reactors who hated her, those who were indifferent, those who thought they weren’t her target audience and 90% realize listening to the first song, that there’s something wrong – because they like it. By the third listen they’re asking how they become swifties. Taylor has jumped around in so many different genres, I don’t believe you wouldn’t like her music is you actually listened to some recommendations. I watched grown men cry, listening to her music.
January 25, 2026 @ 7:08 pm
Herrrrrrrrrre come the swifties!
“I watched grown men cry listening to her music”
….yeah. Somehow I don’t doubt that one bit.
February 3, 2026 @ 5:57 pm
No quarrel with her selection.
John R. Cash is not in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
January 25, 2026 @ 3:24 pm
Taylor Swift indeed is SAVING COUNTRY MUSIC. And to help her we need to dig up John Denver.
i got my mind right boss….
i really do have it right….now
January 25, 2026 @ 10:59 am
as an inspiring song writer
taylor is deserving of this honour.
I do not care about her boyfriend or politics, it is all about the ART.
And she has the artistic merit to get this honour.
congrats to her
January 25, 2026 @ 2:12 pm
I could not care any less about her politics, however I am still unsure how to define why I hate Travis Kelce so much. My best guess is that it’s the way the media pushed him and I think of him like I think of green bean casserole. Maybe it’s the contrarian in me that automatically hates whatever I’m told to like. I feel the same for the astroturfing of Yungblud.
January 26, 2026 @ 12:49 pm
You don’t like green bean casserole?
January 28, 2026 @ 6:28 pm
Dear “Strait”,
You wonder why you do these things..?
Maybe you’re a personality-cult junkie.
You know…deriving something from nothing and then maybe finding offense in it because in your mind it somehow places itself itself above you.
Why not begin assiduously studying and learning this thing, which for want of it compels you criticize others who do, be it guitar or girl, and in one-year a real object will materialize upon the basis of your input, as opposed to fixing it upon this empty calorie cult phenomenon (and entourage) which has presently convinced you that talking about it will make your life better than not talking about it.
Dude, come out of “it” & TV and git free
January 25, 2026 @ 11:08 am
Her worse songs are better than “Waylon, Willie, and Whiskey.”
January 25, 2026 @ 12:31 pm
Sick burn on Dale Watson, but I’m sure he’ll just “Shake It Off.”
January 25, 2026 @ 12:41 pm
As long as his *baby makes him gravy*, I doubt he cares.
Congrats to Ms. Swift. I still don’t get her big appeal tho’. I guess I am too big of a Debbie Gibson fan. 💕
However, I am a Hank Jr. fan and most of the people on here hate him, so, I get that.
January 25, 2026 @ 5:52 pm
What about “Willie, Waylon and Me?” As far as I can tell DAC isn’t in, and that’s criminal.
January 25, 2026 @ 11:17 am
I’m sure there’ll be people butthurt about this that don’t understand it because they’re not the target audience. I’m not sure where this narcissism comes from when people who aren’t the target audience proceed to whine, cry, bitch and moan about something when they’re not the target audience, as if everything should be catered to them.
Yes, she deserves it.
January 25, 2026 @ 11:40 am
Voters voted for big names here. Even the non-singers who got the nod had name recognition and Grammy awards and cred from having the likes of Tina Turner, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Beyonce and others record their songs.
Jeffery Steele, Bob McDill and Larry Weiss (Rhinestone Cowboy) are among the nominees who didn’t get in.
There were plenty of other accomplished singer/songwriters who didn’t get in like Boz Scaggs, Richard Carpenter, David Byrne and the guys from America and the Guess Who who didn’t get the nod. Big stars, but these winners were the multi-platinum upper crust. I think of Boz, David and the others as more of the craftsmen of the genre. Successful but not omnipresent like Mariah, Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
Yes, Kenny Loggins is upper crust, not just because of his 80’s hits. He’s had acts like Anne Murray get big hits covering his songs. Alanis is a bit thin after her debut album.
There’s hope for McDill, Steele and others in Nashville. Tom T. got elected in 2019 while he was still with us. He said that he really never considered that a possibility for himself.
I thought Taylor was a shoo-in because she’s the biggest artist in the world and that would trump everything, fair or unfair. She has a large catalogue, and few have reached the heights that she has.
January 25, 2026 @ 11:46 am
She deserves this. Sure, maybe it could have waited a bit longer, but so what. She’s a total package artist.
I’m not much of a fan of her recordings but I recognize her talent and immense drive.
January 25, 2026 @ 1:10 pm
If they induct her into the Country music hall of fame, that will be the end.
January 25, 2026 @ 1:34 pm
Its going to happen at some point and she will deserve it. Pretty much every young female country artist in their 20s cite her as inspiration and that will continue. Her pop country albums alone are enough to get her in, add in the other stuff shes done for the genre and its a no brainer.
January 25, 2026 @ 1:29 pm
I was worried when you broached this topic Trig but find myself in complete agreement with you
January 25, 2026 @ 1:57 pm
As each new group of inductees to one or another Hall of Fame get announced each year, I increasingly feel like we should just rethink the entire idea. Let’s leave the Hall of Fame as a place to Homer the people who created the music we had today. The ones that weren’t riding on the shoulders of decades of folks before them, basically just writing new songs on a framework created long before they were born. The ones who invented how to play a guitar in a bluegrass band, or invented the layouts of music that 95% of it follows. Taylor Swift is a follower. It doesn’t matter if she wrote her own stuff. She didn’t really invent anything new or interesting.
Maybe we should stop the current Marketing Halls of Fame, and make a new one(s) that cuts off in maybe 1970, when all the new stuff pretty much stopped. Leave the Hall of Fame for those who were on their own and figured it out for all of us.
January 26, 2026 @ 7:10 am
As I reread this, I realize that autocorrect “with AI” massacred my meaning. As usual.
My point was have a real, exclusive HoF for the people who were the actual groundbreakers. Who figured this stuff out from nothing and essentially codified what every other musician did after him. These folks deserve special recognition.
Then let the other Halls of Fame represent the ones that just built on the shoulders of others, perhaps quite successfully. TS didn’t invent anything that she does. Most musicians don’t. We should recognize those who did.
January 26, 2026 @ 10:03 am
So by that logic we would have one inauguration and that would be that. No others admitted? That would be a snoozer. Most hall of fames (referencing sports HOF’s) define candidates as excelling and impacting their field for the time they were active above most of their contemporaries. Objectively, Taylor Swift has a pretty air tight resume.
January 27, 2026 @ 5:12 am
Could not agree more. Appalled at the Rock Hall every year. Felt bad for Chubby Checker, who is good but in no way in the league of the early classes, and he was by far the only remotely deserving inductee this past year. Have been unhappy with some of the Country ones too (June Carter when Johnny Horton still waits and even Goldie… strictly name appeal at that point). It belittles and cheapens the halls and those originally inducted.
January 25, 2026 @ 2:07 pm
Almost all of Taylor Swift’s catalogue is better than ‘Lick It Up’ and ‘Love Gun’. I’m not a big fan of Kenny Loggins but he co-wrote one of my favorite classic rock songs: ‘What A Fool Believes’. Even though Taylor Swift has a tendency to rhyme “car” and “bar” in many of her songs she is a trend setter in Pop music. There are a few exceptions but most major artists only have a 10 yr period where they release songs that define their success. Think about it, most major acts really only have 10 years on top. Taylor Swift has been doing it for nearly 20 years. That distinction alone makes her deserving of the award.
January 25, 2026 @ 2:33 pm
Giving Swift credit for songwriting being a thing is so egregiously stupid that it’s not even funny. Pop stars wrote their own songs that were super specific and personal before her, and pretending as if they did just to prop her up because you’re salty that some people still find her mid is extremely transparent. You can say she’s a good writer without dismissing the influential artists that came before and did a number of things before her. Y’all be so desperate to make “Swift invented personal songwriting” a thing, and it’s so bizarre. If a person is really as talented as people say, the work speaks for itself, the lies just undermine it.
January 25, 2026 @ 3:43 pm
Players gonna play, play, play, play
Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate
That is lyrical GENIUS, folks
January 25, 2026 @ 6:14 pm
Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer.
Will Taylor Swift get one next?
January 26, 2026 @ 4:15 am
Yup, it’s laughable.
January 26, 2026 @ 6:59 am
Maybe, but its a bit like robbie williams having more number one albums than the beatles means nothing, we both know the beatles were way better than robbie williams.
January 26, 2026 @ 8:38 am
Depends on how much one costs, I guess.
January 25, 2026 @ 6:20 pm
Taylor Swift is a awesome artist yes she has her bad songs but she has a good voice and she is happy I am her biggest fan my uncle is a bigger Swifty fan than I am
January 25, 2026 @ 6:41 pm
This is probably less about if she deserves it and more about keeping her name from clogging the ballot for a number of years when she will get in anyway.
January 25, 2026 @ 11:48 pm
In most Halls of Fame, they have the distinction of a nominee getting in during their first year of eligibility that conveys an extra level of prestige. The Country Music Hall of Fame doesn’t have that because its perpetually 15 years behind. Not even Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks could get in their first year. Dwight Yoakam and Clint Black aren’t even in at all.
January 25, 2026 @ 6:55 pm
Well, she’s in good company with Jay-Z and George Clinton! (Both in the songwriting hall of fame)
Nothing says songwriting quite like Atomic Dog and Get up For The Downstroke.
January 25, 2026 @ 8:18 pm
Personally i think taylor will deserve to be in the country hall of fame when she gets in as well as the pop hall of fame. Far as a writer, i dont know. I think most of her songs are catchy and fairly simple hence i guess their appeal. I enjoyed her when she was in the country field and i liked her songs because they were catchy but i never thought there was any serious writing talent there. Kind of like a poet who writes the poems on hallmark cards. All very nice and can be very meaningful for some special someone but hall of fame worthy. I dont know but it also doesnt really matter. Most of the hall of fames are pretty much a joke now anyway.
January 25, 2026 @ 9:26 pm
MANY of her “Swifties” are some of the rudest fans I have ever come across….I personally don’t think she deserves this or being eventually into the Country Music Hall of Fame….And if one person throws the hate word at me, I will become as rude as her fans LOL
January 26, 2026 @ 10:54 pm
There’s no one who’s ever been associated (even in name only) with Country Music (not even Garth, Mandrel, FGL, or Nancy Sepulvado) who I despise more than her. She is the Country Music Antichrist (imho). Agree with you completely
January 25, 2026 @ 11:19 pm
Oh, haven’t you heard? This is the era in which accolades are handed out based on feelings rather than actual merit. Also, keep in mind that Jay-Z is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame as well, despite him never having written any, ya’ know, ACTUAL SONGS.
January 25, 2026 @ 11:28 pm
I don’t like her music, but she didn’t write it for me. She wrote for the giga-millions of people who do like it. Of course she deserves it.
January 26, 2026 @ 12:15 am
She sucks and she’s a bad person. Superficial pop music garbage delivered by a narcissist.
January 26, 2026 @ 12:18 am
it is well deserved. Well done to her.
January 26, 2026 @ 12:44 am
I am a radio DJ in Greece. I hardly ever play any songs of Ms. Swift, and neither do my colleagues. We don’t have anything against her, we just don’t see any ‘greatness’ in her songs–they are mediocre, at best. When the best thing you can say about her hits is that they are… ‘catchy’, well…
I can’t think of a single one of her songs (and i’ve heard them all) that has that ‘all-time classic’ quality to it that we will be listening to years and decades in the future. Can you?
January 26, 2026 @ 4:44 pm
“Welcome to New York”
January 26, 2026 @ 3:57 am
There’s a podcast – occasionally/irregularly posted – that goes into songwriting, called, appropriately enough, What’s in a Song, by Berkley College of Music professor (and songwriter), Scarlet Keys.
Ms. Keys is almost sycophantic in her admiration and adulation of Ms. Swift – teaching an entire course on “The Songwriting of Taylor Swift.”
A “current” series in this podcast is breaking down each track of “The Life of a Showgirl” with a “forensic musicologist” named Joe Bennet (also pretty over the top in his admiration of TS), where they breakdown – almost line by line – each song – not so much for the Easter eggs, but to the songwriting parts and pieces used. At the moment, they’ve stalled – for some reason – at the fourth track, “Father Figure,” back in November, and while I’m not Swiftie, I can appreciate what they’re pointing out – word choice, rhythm, melodic references – everything that goes into songwriting, not just “pop and circumstances…” (not a misspelling there…).
If you’re curious, you can find “What’s In A Song” – with other songwriters and exercises – on Spotify at –
https://open.spotify.com/show/5HpvEDnbCf0UP6QjjXiwuz
…or “other streaming services near you….”
January 26, 2026 @ 8:50 am
Reminds me of a Greek poetry class I took in college where the Professor (quite esteemed, at that!) was breaking down a poem for the class in a lot of intricate detail. Then, I reached out to the poet himself, presenting what our Professor was telling us as my interpretation. His answer? “No, that’s not it at all.” 🙂
Academic analysis of songwriting, or even art for that matter, is overrated. I remind you that some of the greatest painters in European art history were thought of as talentless by their contemporary academics. And the reverse. And many successful directors have publicly said that their success was partly due to _not_ following what they learned in cinema school, and doing the opposite things instead. Go figure. 🙂
January 27, 2026 @ 4:35 pm
The minute you start pulling songs apart, the magic disappears. I can name one song of Swift’s that I like, the track that was on the Where The Crawdads Sing soundtrack. For me, her songs are paint-by-numbers, which is exactly the kind of music that hypnotizes the masses, those who need to be told what to listen to, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
January 26, 2026 @ 10:31 am
Ok but how is being self-referential in and of itself superior art? I recognize how much space she takes up in Pop music but her fandom and “depth” in her songwriting, as Peter Griffin said, insists upon itself.
January 26, 2026 @ 4:14 am
The entertainment industry doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. It’s a big, lame joke on the audiences’ behalf.
January 26, 2026 @ 7:10 am
It is not worth the outrage.
The same institution inducted Shania Twain.
January 26, 2026 @ 10:32 am
‘Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under’ is a great song. Even Stevie Wonder can tell why the music video is also great.
January 26, 2026 @ 12:43 pm
It was the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame that inducted Shania, not the more global Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York. As I said at that time Shania was questionable to pick, when we all know Mutt was the real powerhouse behind her career. At the least he deserved induction with her.
https://savingcountrymusic.com/why-shania-twain-is-interesting-pick-for-songwriters-hall-of-fame/
January 26, 2026 @ 10:25 am
She is one of the many reasons I do not listen to modern Country “music”. Modern Country is made of pitiful excuses for singers, who cannot even tell a story coherently. But if this is what you like, then I guess she deserves to be there. Sad actually.
January 26, 2026 @ 12:36 pm
Taylor Swift has not been considered “country” for over a decade, even by Taylor Swift, and never really was before then. That is why she left the genre. There are TONS for great modern country artists. You just can’t wait for country radio to play them for you. Stick around here for a little bit, you will find them.
January 26, 2026 @ 10:30 am
…weird as it may seem in camelot – but could that institution perhaps be right?
January 26, 2026 @ 4:16 pm
FWIW….Taylor also wrote “Better Man” and sent it to Little Big Town because she thought they would be the best interpreter of her lyrics. They got a Grammy for it, Swift got the CMA Song of the Year and deflected adulation back to LBT. That’s the kind of person that just enjoys songwriting.
January 26, 2026 @ 6:04 pm
Complete nonsense.
This is where a lack of taste and culture leads, to glorifying just anyone (for example, Taylor Swift).
Maybe she’ll deserve this award one day (you never know, although I doubt it), but not today.
January 26, 2026 @ 7:42 pm
Swift represents the worst of America. If soulless, upper middle-class cheeseball suburbia were a person, it would be Taylor Swift. She’s unsweet tea. She’s gluten-free biscuits. She’s a pumpkin spice latte with oat milk. She’s as empty as the minds of the pasty-white princesses who made her rich.
Never before in history could someone so void of anything resembling talent become so successful. Her fame is a sign of our cultural and artistic decay, and a marker of our decreasing national IQ.
It makes perfect sense to induct her.
January 27, 2026 @ 7:17 am
The idea that Taylor Swift’s pop music is any worse than any generation’s pop music is a fanciful, hubristic notion. It’s recency bias. The ’80s were filled with horrible but catchy pop music. A good case in point is KISS.
January 27, 2026 @ 12:13 pm
The term “recency bias” was created by people who can’t recognize patterns, as a way to cope with the fact that everything is getting progressively worse and that human civilization peaked in the mid 20th century. Everything good that has come since that time was built off of that foundation.
Kiss? Braindead comparison.
Swift is the biggest pop star in the world. If you’d like to attempt an argument for her being in the same talent universe as Michael Jackson, Elvis, The Beatles, etc., by all means go ahead.
January 27, 2026 @ 12:18 pm
“Kiss? Braindead comparison.”
Well, they’re nominated in the same class, so it seems like of relevant.
January 26, 2026 @ 8:56 pm
Eh, why fight it? Someday HARDY is going in too.
I actually don’t mind this one at all. She’s written/co-written a million hits and “All Too Well” is an all timer. She’ll forever have my respect on that alone.
January 26, 2026 @ 10:44 pm
Won’t ever condone her getting any accolade that’s not bubblegum specific & the day she potentially gets in the Hall of Fame, I better be dead (& I’ve only got her by 3 plus months). And obviously we all can site Hank, everything by 29, Songwriters Hall at 47 (and clearly that pop tart could never) and I’ll add Brian Wilson who accomplished more by 24 (20 arguably too) as a writer (& producer/arranger) than anyone before or since. He was 58 when he got it. This is a joke and society catering to a mediocre talent and less than human for reasons I’ll never understand
January 27, 2026 @ 12:26 am
So you’d rather die than see Taylor Swift get into the Hall of Fame. (the Country Music one, presumably.) That’s dedication. And we think the Swifties are nuts. You have them beat.
January 27, 2026 @ 4:54 am
I think most people who love it and have lived it for decades would and would express it that way or something similar. It would be devastating to everyone who came before her and devoted their lives to the genre. When she won the EOTY in ‘09 there was that incident at Hank’s grave. Many thought that was the nail in the coffin. We have to remember folks did die for this music. Nothing to scoff at. I do think her fans are lunatics because she’s nowhere near as great in any regard as their fandom dictates. Country Music on the other hand, real Country Music, is worth the devotion and care. I’m literally alive because of it so maybe I take it more to heart, and I always will
January 27, 2026 @ 6:08 pm
Even though I don’t get the appeal, I think what Taylor has accomplished is amazing. She is proof that having a well-oiled machine behind you run by people who know exactly what they’re doing is essential. Taylor has one of the best marketing teams ever assembled. And while her songwriting to me is cotton candy when what I seek is steak (Bob McDill, for instance), it doesn’t mean that she isn’t talented or hasn’t worked hard on her craft. All Halls of Fame have become sort of a joke simply because of who they leave out. Let’s just enjoy what we enjoy, and let others enjoy what they enjoy.
January 27, 2026 @ 8:47 pm
Many of her big pop hits of the past 15 or so years (including the ones from her current album) have the artistic imprint of Max Martin and Shellback, more than the artistic imprint of Taylor Swift. I would imagine this honor is based more on her early country-pop hits and her work between “Reputation” and “The Life of a Showgirl” than on “We (hee) Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together,” “End Game,” or “The Fate of Ophelia,” which I consider Max Martin songs that Taylor Swift just happens to be singing.
January 29, 2026 @ 5:04 pm
This is an interesting take. We’ve heard about Shania and Mutt Lange ad nauseum, but Alanis Morrisette was mentioned, too. Would her (one) big album have made the same impact without Glen Ballard in the driver’s seat?
January 30, 2026 @ 8:29 am
Taylor Swift is a generational culture changer as a talent and icon for young women,especially young suburban white women.
January 30, 2026 @ 8:49 am
When you get right down to it…
T.S. has a MASSIVE catalogue of stuff she’s written either mostly or entirely by herself. quality aside, concerns about depth or lackthereof of the lyrics aside, questions about quality of PRODUCTION or even what genre it belongs in aside…
She’s sold an assload of material that she wrote herself.
That’s hard to deny… YES Albert can tell you all about the pet rock that sold like hotcakes. (How’s your rock, Albert?) and there’s people who bought a solar powered clothesdryer only to open the mail and find a clothesline… So “selling” a product doesn’t necessarily equate to meaningful art
But few people in the modern era have consistently gotten large numbers of people to consume that many songs they themselves wrote.
“Songwriter” is appropriate terminology for Taylor Swift.
Songwriter hall of fame is an appropriate honor.
Regarding Country Music Hall of Fame, I think enough questions about the production of her material, even some of her ostensibly country stuff, and certainly the fact that she publicly broke with the genre and went her own way, may be enough to sink her chances at a country music hall of fame induction
And to prove my point that leaving the genre after years of debate about whether she was country SHOULD be enough to lock her out
I will remind everyone that Elvis (in the hall of fame) recorded dedicated Country songs and albums and much of his work (Country and otherwise) was enjoyed by people who otherwise enjoyed Country Music.
See: the million dollar quartet, with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins
Of those four, ONLY Carl Perkins is NOT in the CMOF. (He Is, however, in the Nashville Songwriter’s hall of fame)
Elvis was always adjacent to, and often, a part of, the Country genre proper.
A second point of evidence and credibility for Elvis
He was supposed to be in True Grit with John Wayne.
The biggest consumer of western movies and tv shows is the same target audience who consumes Country Music.
He was replaced in that movie by Glen Campbell.
Glen Campbell did an entire movie (with the jordanairres who sang backup for elvis) in which he sings elvis style songs as an animated rooster drawn to look like Elvis.
The Jordanairres made several appearances on the old Opry show.
To deny that Elvis had, earned, and deserved a proper space in the Country Genre would be to deny logic, evidence and sanity.
And while Ray Charles didn’t have quite so extensive a direct line into the country music vein, he DID record half a dozen albums of dedicated country covers, (More than keith whitley and Taylor swift put together, for those keeping score (Not counting Taylor Swift’s albums that weren’t counted as country)) appeared at least twice on Hee Haw (I recall two, if I’ve forgotten a third/fourth, please correct me) and always publicly professed a genuine love for Country Music.
Unlike Elvis, Ray was someone from outside the genre who dabbled in its borders and was enjoyed BY Country fans as an outsider. the way country fans enjoyed Peter Paul and Mary.
By contrast, it isn’t hard to raise questions about how much Taylor Swift likes, cares about, or belongs in the country music genre. No dedicated album of songs universally understood as country songs exist. (No ray price, willie nelson, patsy cline covers album, for instance, so country hits of the seventies country album. No duets with Vince Gill, etc)
The only ‘evidence’ people can point to of Taylor Swift being “A Country Singer” is the classification of her early records and her media appearances, all of which existed in the country space because she was marketed there.
To wit “It’s Country Because it says so on the label.”
Well, believe it or not, the titmouse is actually a bird. saying “Taylor Swift’s early songs are country because it says so on the label” shouldn’t be the smoking gun some proponents will make it out to be.
Should she be “considered” for the CMHoF? I’ve never heard of anything so dangerous it can’t be talked about. Obviously it SHOULD be talked about, objectively. After all, she made HUGE waves in the genre. BUT should a career that raised questions about what was and wasn’t country, and ultimately left the genre be eligible for the hall of fame merely because a ton of records were sold? is “a commitment to the genre” a requirement?
These are questions “hopefully” for dedicated musicologists to address BEFORE Taylor Swift is seriously considered for the CMHoF.
In the meantime, the songwriter’s hall of fame is acknowledging the reality that she’s one of the most successful songwriters of the modern era. FEW stars in ANY era of ANY genre have reached household name status on a catalogue of originals.
February 1, 2026 @ 7:47 am
Had Taylor remained in Country music,she wouldn’t be a billionairess !!!!!