“Well hi. I want to say thank you to Bart for introducing me in such a generous way, and I want to say thank you to the NSAI for getting us all together for this event tonight. It’s been beautiful. For me, tonight feels brimming with genuine camaraderie between a bunch people who really, really love making stuff, who really love the craft, who live for that rare, pure moment when a magical cloud floats down right in front of you in the form of an idea for a song, and all you have to do is grab it. And then you shape it like clay, prune it like.a garden, and wish on every lucky star or pray to whatever power you believe in that it might find its way out into the world and make someone feel seen, feel understood, feel joined in their grief or heartbreak or joy for just one moment. I’ve learned by being in the entertainment industry for an extended period of time that this business operates with a very ‘new, new, new,’ ‘next, next, next,’ mentality, right? For every artist or songwriter, we’re all just hoping for one great year, one great album cycle, one great run at radio, and these days, one song that goes viral on TikTok. One glorious moment in the sun. Because on your next project, you’ll probably have to invent a new thing to be, think of all new things to say, and fresh ways to say them. You will have to entertain people, and the fact is, that what entertains us is either seeing new artists emerge or seeing established artists showing us a new side of themselves. If we are very, very lucky, life will say to us, ‘Your song is great!’ The next thing life will say is, ‘What else can you do?’ I say all this because I am 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: challenges, gauntlets laid down, albums I’m proud of, triumphs, stories of luck or misfortune, loud embarrassing errors and subsequent recovery from those mistakes, and lessons learned from all of it. This award celebrates my family, coworkers, 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 songwriting and my life, they are one and the same. As the great Nora Ephron once said, 'Everything is copy.’ Twenty years ago I wrote my first song. I used to dream about one day getting to bounce around the different musical worlds of my various sonic influences and change up the production of my albums. I hoped that one day, the blending of genres wouldn’t be such a big deal. There’s so much discussion about genre and it usually always leads back to a conversation about melody and production, but that leaves out possibly my fave part of songwriting: lyricism. And I have never talked about this publicly before. because it’s dorky, but I have in my mind, secretly established genre category for lyrics I write. Three of them, to be exact. They are affectionately titled quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics, and glitter gel pen lyrics. I know this sounds confusing but I’ll try to explain it. I came up with these categories based on what writing tool I imagined having in my hand when I scribbled it down. Figuratively - I don’t actually have a quill anymore. I broke it once when I was mad. I categorize certain songs of mine in the 'quill’ style if the words and phrasings are antiquated. If I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë, or after watching a movie where everyone is wearing poet shirts and corsets. If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that, to me, is writing in the quill genre. I will now give you an example of one of my songs I would categorize as quill: 'How’s one to know I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones in a faith-forgotten land? In from the snow, your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand.’ Moving on to lyricism category number two: fountain pen style. I’d say most of my lyrics fall into this category. Fountain pen style means a modern storyline or references with a poetic twist—taking a common phrase and flipping its meaning. Basically trying to paint a vivid picture of a situation down to the chipped paint on the doorframe and the incense dust on the vinyl shelf, placing yourself and whoever is listening right there in the room where it all happened: the love, the loss, everything. The songs I categorize in this style sound like confessions scribbled and sealed in an envelope that are too brutally honest to ever send. For example, 'cause there we are again in the middle of the night, we’re dancing round the kitchen in the refrigerator light, down the stairs, I was there, I remember it all too well. And there we are again when nobody had to know, you kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath, Sacred prayer and we’d swear to remember it all too well’ The third category is called glitter gel pen, and it lives up to its name in every way. These lyrics are frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat. Glitter gel pen lyrics don’t care if you don’t take them seriously because they don’t take themselves seriously. Glitter gel pen lyrics are the drunk girl at the party who tells you that you look like an angel in the bathroom. It is what we need every once in awhile in these fraught times in which we live. For example, 'my ex man brought his new girlfriend, he’s like oh my god, but I’m just gonna shake, and to the fella over there with the hella good hair, won’t you come on over baby and we can shake, shake, shake?’ Why did I make these categories, you ask? Honestly, because I love doing this thing that we are fortunate enough to call a job. Writing songs is my life’s work, and my hobby, and my never-ending thrill. I am moved beyond words that a few of my peers decided to honor me in this way for this work that I’d still be doing if I never got recognized for it. Lately, I’ve been on a joyride down memory lane because I’ve been rerecording my first six albums. And when i go through the process of meticulously recreating each element of my past and revisiting the songs I wrote at 13, 14, 15, that path leads me right to Music Row. My mom would pick me up from school, drive me to cowriting sessions with dozens of writers—and some of you are in this very room tonight—who 15 years ago decided to give me their time, wisdom, and belief before anyone thought that writing with me was a productive use of an afternoon. I will never forget you, every last one of you. Part of my rerecording process has included adding songs that never made the original albums, but songs I hated to leave behind, going back, and rerecording a bunch of them for my version of my albums. Fearless (My Version) came out last year, and as I was choosing songs for it, I came across one I’d written with the Warren Brothers when I was 14. I decided to record it as a duet with the brilliant Keith Urban and when i called up the Warrens to tell them i was cutting our song 17 years after we’d’ written it, I’ll never forget the first thing they said: 'Well, I think that’s the longest hold we’ve ever had!’ In 2011, just over 10 years ago, my trusted collaborator and confidante Liz Rose came over to my apartment and I showed her a song that I had been working on. I was going through a rough time, as is the natural state of being 21, and had scribbled down verse after verse after verse, a song that was way too long to put on an album. It clocked in at around 10 minutes. So we set about editing, trimiming, cutting out big sections until it was a reasonable 5 minutes and 30 seconds. It was called all too well. Last year, when I re-recorded my 2012 album Red, I included this 10-minute version with its original verses and extra bridges. I never would have imagined when we wrote it that that sound would be resurfacing 10 years later or that I’d be about to play it for you tonight. A good song can defy logic or time. A good song transports you to your truest feelings and translates those feelings for you. A good song stays with you even when people or feelings don’t. Writing songs is a calling and getting to call it your career is a calling you have to be grateful everyday for it and for all the people who thought your words were worth listening to. This town is the school that taught me that and to be honored by you, means more than any genre of my lyrics could ever say. Thank you.“”
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