Taylor Swift fights back her tears at Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony

Taylor Swift fought back tears as she thanked her family for "uprooting their entire lives" to help her pursue her music career.

The pop superstar, 36, opened up during an emotional speech at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York City on Thursday night (11.06.26) where she became the youngest ever female star to join the elite group. Swift took to the stage at the Marriott Marquis Hotel following an introduction by Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and she spoke about her family's move from Pennsylvania when she was an aspiring musician.

Taylor grew emotional as she said: "It was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life. But it couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother to just pick up and move our entire family from Pennsylvania to relocate to Nashville so that I could hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world.

"But after making obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their teen daughter was going through, they uprooted their entire lives to move me to Music City.

"And even though words are supposed to kind of be my thing, I will never be able to express my gratitude to you guys for doing that for me. You’re the reason I’m here tonight."

Taylor, who was joined at the ceremony by her fiance Travis Kelce, her mother Andrea Swift and her future mother-in-law Donna Kelce, went on to explain why she was given an introduction by Spielberg at the event, saying: "A few months ago when the Songwriters Hall of Fame asked me about my heroes and the creatives who shaped my storytelling and who I might want to present this award to me, I said Steven’s name.

"And about an hour later to my absolute delight, I ended up on the phone with him and his legendarily effervescent wife, Kate Capshaw, who is here tonight.

"And he was telling me yes, absolutely he would be thrilled to be here. I was completely blown away because the man has a massive film called Disclosure Day that’s coming out at midnight tonight and he’s still going to agree and show up to do this for me a few hours before it comes out.

"Wouldn’t that be impossibly hard to balance? Wouldn’t that be too difficult scheduling wise? I’m trying to give him an out."

She added: "Kate said something I’ll never forget. She said: 'Good and true things are easy.' And 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 whores 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."

The induction ceremony also featured a performance by singer/songwriter Sombr, who performed Taylor's hits including Cardigan and Dear John.

Other inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year included KISS rockers Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, Alanis Morissette, Christopher 'Tricky' Stewart, Walter Afanasieff, Terry Britten, Graham Lyle and Kenny Loggins.