Taylor Swift joked that she is “estranged” from Brad Paisley because of a tour prank that left her sleepless for months.
The 36-year-old superstar made the quip Monday night at Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee, while accepting induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame during the organization’s 56th anniversary gala. Swift, who wore a burgundy velvet dress with an autumnal floral print for the occasion, recalled opening for Paisley on his Bonfires & Amplifiers Tour in 2007 and the elaborate prank he pulled on her.
“He filled my entire tour bus with live crickets, thousands of them,” Swift recalled onstage. “For months I couldn’t sleep. All night I considered buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem.”
With her induction, Swift became the youngest artist ever to enter the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. The 2026 class also includes Shawn Camp, Bruce Channel, Lyle Lovett and Lee Thomas Miller, while George Strait received the Career Maker Award.
Before her acceptance speech, Lainey Wilson performed a stripped-down version of Swift’s hit “Love Story.”
Swift used her time onstage to reflect on her early years in Nashville and the recent 20th anniversary of her self-titled debut album, “Taylor Swift.” She traced her passion for songwriting back to childhood.
“I started writing songs when I was a little kid and I knew from the time I wrote my first song that even if it couldn’t be my career, it would be my passion,” she said. “It would be what I centered my entire life around.”
The cricket incident was not the only milestone Swift marked this year. Earlier in 2026, she became the youngest woman ever inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame at a June ceremony. At that event, she tearfully thanked her parents, Scott and Andrea Swift, and her brother, Austin Swift, for relocating from Pennsylvania to Nashville to support her career.
“You’re the reason I am here tonight,” she added in that speech, calling Nashville “the songwriting capital of the world.”
Monday’s honor carried special weight for the “Cruel Summer” singer. “I am so incredibly honored to be inducted into this sacred club, especially at this point in my life,” Swift told the Nashville audience. “It’s not lost on me how crazy this is.”
She emphasized the city’s formative role in her development. “I will cherish it forever because Nashville is the place that honed and polished the thing about myself and the thing about my life that I am the most proud of and the most passionate about,” she continued.
“So to be here with you and to be getting to have this moment, I am truly grateful and it just feels like one of those amazing Nashville moments I’m going to revisit on a rainy day,” Swift concluded.
The gala came amid a landmark year for the singer. In July, she married NFL star Travis Kelce at a star-studded ceremony at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Two months later, she received the inaugural MTV VMAs Artist Director Honors at the 2026 MTV VMAs in Los Angeles, where she debuted her self-directed music video for “Patient Zero.”
That single served as the lead release from “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore,” the deluxe edition of her 2025 album “The Life of a Showgirl.”