Taylor Swift talks approach to lyrics and ‘All Too Well’ while accepting NSAI’s Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award

nme.com:

Taylor Swift was honoured with the Nashville Songwriters Association International’s Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award at the NSAI’s annual ceremony on Tuesday (September 20) night.Accepting the award at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Swift gave a 13-minute speech in which she discussed her approach to songwriting, re-recording her first six studio albums following her much-publicised masters dispute, the extended version of ‘All Too Well’ that appeared on ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ last year and more.“I’m up here receiving this beautiful award for a decade of work, and I can’t possibly explain how nice that feels.

Because the way I see it, this is an award that celebrates a culmination of moments,” Swift said when accepting the award, as transcribed by Pitchfork.“Challenges.

Gauntlets laid down. Albums I’m proud of. Triumphs. Strokes of luck or misfortune. Loud, embarrassing errors and the subsequent recovery from those mistakes, and the lessons learned from all of it.“This award celebrates my family and my co-writers and my team.

My friends and my fiercest fans and my harshest detractors and everyone who entered my life or left it. Because when it comes to my songwriting and my life, they are one and the same.”Swift went on to describe how she writes lyrics, explaining she breaks them down into three distinct genre categories – “quill”, “fountain pen” and “glitter gel” – based on which writing implement she imagines having in her hand when writing them down.“Quill” lyrics, she said, are songs written if the words and phrasings used are “antiquated”, if she was “inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or after watching a movie where everyone is wearing poet shirts and corsets”.