Taylor Swift is getting her flowers this year for her songwriting prowess.
First, the musical artist was recognized by The New York Times as one of the greatest living songwriters.
Next, a readers choice poll from the Times also voted Swift as the No. 7 greatest living American songwriter.
Now, she became the youngest female artist ever to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame Thursday night. Stevie Wonder is the youngest artist to be inducted.
Taylor Swift as a songwriter
What is it that makes Swift such a strong songwriter?
According to Elly McCausland, who wrote a literal book examining Swift’s songwriting as poetry, it’s a combination of specificity and detail that makes Swift’s songs so memorable.
“She has a talent of kind of condensing these stories into a short song of, you know, three or four minutes,” McCausland told the Deseret News. “... She’s also very, very good at kind of painting pictures through details. She kind of puts the reader in the scene, either by evoking the senses, so like smell, touch, taste, that kind of thing, or through objects.”
Some of those famous objects from her songs include the red scarf from “All Too Well” or the cardigan from “Cardigan.”
One might think the more specific she gets that it would become less relatable, but the result is actually the opposite.
“I think that makes it more relatable because we all have our own version of that, where particular objects, particular things remind us of events, or we put a lot of investment emotionally in particular places or objects,” McCausland said. “And so I think paradoxically, her very specific references make us think of our own specific references and that actually makes her work more relatable.”
Taylor Swift loves good wordplay in her songs
Swift also has the skills to make subtle changes in her songs that lead to new meanings.
“Like in ‘Love Story’ — its chorus goes from ‘Romeo, save me’ to ‘marry me, Juliet,’” McCausland said. “And in other songs, like for example ‘loml,’ it goes ‘love of my life’ to ‘loss of my life,’ so it’s often a shift in just one word or phrase that kind of leaves the listener sort of thinking, ‘ah,’ and then you kind of have to process what’s going on, right, with the narrative.”
Another thing a young Swift was able to do was capture the teenage experience through song. And she did it at a time when not many young writers were doing that.
“She also started writing about quite girlish teenage themes at a time when that was seen as silly, when, you know, artists were actually trying to be more serious and more grown up,” McCausland said. “She was kind of reveling in being a teenage girl at a time when that wasn’t really the done thing.”
Taylor Swift loves nostalgia, and it shows through her songs
Swift is the queen of nostalgia. Her songs can transport listeners on a journey through a story using vivid, specific details and melodies that hearken back to simpler times.
And listeners are taking notice.
The music artist has earned a No. 1 spot on the charts for a song each year so far this decade.
She recently released a new song she wrote for “Toy Story 5″ called “I Knew It, I Knew You.” It broke the streaming records on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music for the number of first-day listens.
The melodies and the lyrics take listeners back to a younger time in the song, starting the song out with “I knew you through the daze of the blades of grass in summer / Parachutes for the free fall of being younger.”
The song’s themes involve looking back and remembering simpler times — having that trademark nostalgic moment.
Swift is the first songwriter to write for the “Toy Story” universe outside of Randy Newman.
The cast and crew were recently filmed praising the song and saying how much it adds to the poignancy of the film.
“It’s aligned on an emotional level, for me, with Randy Newman’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me,’” Tim Allen said in the video.
Why Taylor Swift has been famous for so long
One reason Swift has lasted in such an ever-evolving industry for the last 20 years has to be at least partially chocked up to her songwriting capabilities.
“Pop stars are not supposed to last this long or create this much,” the Times article reads. “The Beatles’ entire creative output happened, essentially, in eight years. But Swift’s durability — 12 studio albums and hundreds of songs over two decades — has given us an unprecedented combination of musical auteurism and commercial success.”
Her work has earned the honors of multiple Grammy Awards, iHeartRadio Music Awards and many more accolades.
She has the ability to write songs that connect with a broad swath of people, and those songs resonate deeply with her fans. That’s her superpower.
“Swift is first and foremost a storyteller,” McCausland writes in her book. “Her songs have the remarkable ability to condense a sweeping, sometimes epic narrative into just a few lines, often taking the listener on a journey alongside the speaker through a wealth of emotions and reactions.”