Taylor Swift shared words of wisdom for young songwriters during her induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 11 (US time) in New York City.
During her acceptance speech, the singer-songwriter emphasized the importance of staying true to one's passion and creative instincts despite outside noise and criticism.
"If I had advice for young artists, though, who should perhaps be interested in it, I would say you really have to prioritize what you love down to your very core. Because you’ll need that if your song ever gets heard by the public, or the critics, or the haters posing as critics, or the people chronically online, or the robots posing as people who are chronically online," she said, as reported by Billboard.
Taylor went on to reflect on the delicate balance songwriters must maintain between being emotionally open and resilient enough to share their work with the world.
"Songwriters have a real balancing act that they have to conduct every day, because inherently we’re supposed to let it all in, feel deeply and sensitively to the point of near delusion, and then reflect those feelings and delusions back to the world in the form of a three and a half minute sonic landscape, or a bop, or a folktale, or a battle cry, or a 10-minute coming of age song about a scarf," she stated.
The global pop star also reminded young artists to prepare themselves for criticism and negative feedback, which she said are inevitable parts of a creative career.
"So, it’s hard to harden yourself to certain brutal elements of this world, but allow me to now make a hard pivot and pull out a quote I love from the show Yellowstone. When father says to his son, 'It’s the one constant in life, son. You build something worth having, somebody’s gonna try to take it,'" she said.
She went on: "So John Dutton was talking about a ranch, but I’m using this quote to refer to your self-worth, your peace of mind and your singular vision as a creator. Positive feedback and people loving what you wrote feels incredible, and I hope you get lots of it, but you need to be ready to receive negative feedback, whether you seek it out or not. It’s no longer a shock that this is how things work, but somehow it feels like I have this conversation with a young writer every other week. If you make anything awesome, someone out there is bound to say horrible things about it or twist what you meant into something completely unrecognizable to you."
Taylor also encouraged young songwriters to develop the strength needed to separate constructive feedback from comments that can harm their creativity.
"What I hope you discover is this: You can be sensitive, but also durable, and you can accept that feedback and skepticism and criticism are inevitable. You can take what’s useful or constructive from that information and leave out what’s simply damaging to your creativity," she stated.
The singer-songwriter also stressed that no piece of art can resonate with everyone, noting that artists should be confident in their work regardless of how differently audiences may interpret or respond to it.
"No one does or should make art that appeals to everyone everywhere all the time. My favorite art is detailed and singular in its voice, therefore it can’t be digested and metabolized by everyone who experiences it in the same way," she said.
"I’m very frequently told by people how they feel about my music, that they never really got my music until they got their heart broken or started driving their daughter to school every day, or until I made an alternative album in the pandemic called Folklore, or that they only like the hits, or that they only like the ones that weren’t hits, or that they don’t like any of it at all. But it doesn’t feel uncomfortable for me to get feedback of all sorts, because I know where I stand regarding the work I’ve made," she added.
Taylor concluded by speaking about the profound connection between artists and audiences, saying that writers can only hope their work finds people at the right moment in their lives.
"As writers, we can only hope to meet people where they are in their lives, but you can’t ever orchestrate or force the encounter. You just have to hope that some, in some exquisite happenstance, you bump into them on the same path at the same time. But somehow amidst the noise of life, a line we wrote or a melody that we crafted cuts through, and they hear it, they feel something, they get chills or feel lighter, or think of someone they love. Our goal is to elicit that glint of recognition in another human being, because something that felt good and true to us feels good and true to them at the same time, and in that moment when someone blurts out, 'I love this song,' it was easy," she stated.