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Over the course of eighteen years and eleven albums, Taylor Swift has conquered multiple genres ranging from country music to pop to alternative rock and finally to folk music. The songwriter first started as a country singer, but slowly transitioned into a pop star, with 1989 being her first official pop album.
Thereafter, she tried a concoction of indie-folk, electro-folk, alternative rock, and indietronica to come up with Evermore and Folklore during the COVID-19 pandemic. The uniqueness of Taylor Swift lies in her ability to blend into any genre of music and make it her own. These qualities have made fans wonder how she writes her songs.
Taylor Swift once revealed that she categorizes her songs into three genres: Quill Lyrics, Fountain Pen Lyrics, and Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics. According to her, these categories are based on the type of lyrics and the writing instrument she imagines holding while scribbling them down.
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The singer elaborated on the entire recipe of her songwriting process in her acceptance speech after receiving the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award at Nashville Songwriter Awards ceremony, held on September 21, 2022. She is the first female artist in history to secure that award.
What did Taylor Swift reveal about her songwriting process?
In her Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award acceptance speech, Taylor Swift talked about the challenges faced by songwriters today and gave a free walkthrough of her entire songwriting process.
"20 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," Taylor Swift started discussing her journey as a musician so far.
Revealing that her favorite part of songwriting is lyricism, Taylor started dissecting her tried-and-tested method of categorizing her songs. There are three styles in which Taylor Swift's songs are divided; Quill Lyrics, Fountain Pen Lyrics, and Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics. Let's take a close look at each one of them.
Quill Lyrics
According to Taylor Swift, songs are classified as Quill Lyrics if their phrases and lines have an air of sophistication. She explained how she implements this method:
"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’s me writing in the Quill genre."
She described Quill Lyrics using the song Ivy from her album, Evermore.
"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"
Fountain Pen Lyrics
Fountain Pen Lyrics contain songs that have a 'modern storyline' with an undertone of sophisticated and poetic references. Taylor Swift said that most of her songs fall into this category. She also explained the category by using several references to relatable situations.
"Taking a common phrase and flipping its meaning. Trying to paint a vivid picture of a situation, down to the chipped paint on the door frame 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," Taylor added.
The perfect example of a Fountain Lyrics song is All Too Well from her album Red:
"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"
Glitter Pen Lyrics
The songs that belong to the Glitter Pen category are represented as 'frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat.' According to the Grammy winner, these songs aren't to be taken seriously and are only there to be enjoyed along with the beat.
"Glitter Gel Pen lyrics are the drunk girl at the party who tells you that you look like an Angel in the bathroom. It’s what we need every once in a while in these fraught times in which we live," Taylor Swift mentioned.
The best example of a Glitter Gel Lyrics is the song, Shake It Off, from Taylor Swift's 1989 album.
Taylor Swift revealed the process of writing All Too Well
In the acceptance speech, Taylor Swift gave her fans valuable insights into how All Too Well (10 Minute Version) came to be. The long, uncut version of the song was penned 10 years ago when Taylor Swift was 21 years old.
"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 too long to put on an album. It clocked in at around 10 minutes," revealed Taylor.
However, her collaborator Liz Roze decided that it was too long to be put in the album. They trimmed and edited huge parts of it to finally bring it down to 5 minutes 30 seconds. However, the unedited version came in handy long after when she was jotting down the songs to release in her Red (Taylor's Version).
"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 could’ve imagined when we wrote it that that song would be resurfacing ten years later or that I’d be about to play it for you tonight," Taylor concluded.
Discussing the significance of the categories, Taylor added that writing songs is her life and a 'never-ending thrill.'
"I am moved beyond words that you, my peers, decided to honor me in this way for work I’d still be doing if I had never been recognized for it," Swift mentioned.
Taylor Swift ended the 10-minute-long acceptance speech by thanking the fans and audience for their incessant support, which meant more to her than any song lyrics.
