When your fan club includes everyone from icons like Sir Paul McCartney to Stevie Nicks, you can be sure that the hype is more than warranted, and the genius is genuine: Taylor Swift is perhaps the most renowned singer-songwriter of her generation, with a gift that cannot be duplicated. 

Bruce Springsteen called her a “tremendous songwriter.” Billy Joel compared her to the Beatles, Dolly Parton has been a longtime admirer, and Carole King has called her an inspiration. For this list of esteemed artists who have influenced you throughout your life, to show you this level of respect, must be the honor of a lifetime. 

Summing up a career as extraordinary as Taylor’s, the default is to simply look at the stats: the best-selling female recording artist of all time (with more than 100 million albums sold); the most Billboard Top 10 hits by a female artist; a groundbreaking and record-breaking world tour that was so massive it propped up local economies; multiple entertainer of the year awards from multiple organizations, and 14 Grammy awards, including four trophies for Album of the Year, the most of any musician in Recording Academy history.

Additionally, Taylor was the youngest winner of the Songwriters Hall of Fame Hal David Award. She was the youngest person to win BMI’s President’s Award. She would become the youngest person to win the Album of the Year Award at the Grammys. She achieved all of this by age 20, and was only on her 2nd album. Taylor would soon prove that she was just getting started.

Artists more seasoned than Swift have found themselves artistically frozen after reaching a critical and commercial peak, treading the same familiar ground in hopes it will conjure up the same fruitful bounty as before.

But Taylor has never been one to repeat herself or to shy away from challenges; she’s more apt to create new ones in hopes of proving that she could achieve it after all. It’s why for “Speak Now,” it was a singular songwriting effort, with no collaborations on any of the 14 tracks — shutting down doubters who questioned how much of Taylor’s  input was really creating those hits.

In the history of recorded music, there is a small minority of artists who have had the kind of hitmaking longevity of Swift, who this year will celebrate the 20th anniversary of her first record, the tender “Tim McGraw.” In her two-decade career, Taylor Swift has given us 12 studio albums, totaling 187 songs, plus a staggering amount of additional music that doesn’t even include the songs she’s written for others, or the ones she finally set free from the vaults as part of the revisiting of her first six albums in her ultimate triumphant battle to secure the masters to her original recordings.

Swift’s ability to shapeshift as a songwriter, to inhabit different sonic landscapes and write as credibly in the world of one genre as she does another is part of her superpower as a songwriter. It also represents the boldness and bravery of her artistry: to explore new frontiers when the most practical next step would be to keep mining the material that has gotten you the success in the first place.

Taylor is still creating, still coming up with magic, most notably with the release of her latest album, “The Life Of A Showgirl.” Once again, she released and topped the charts, dominated the cultural conversation and delivered a smash with the very first single, “The Fate Of Ophelia.”  The only thing that has proven formulaic about Taylor is her consistent schedule of hits.

For Taylor, each song is like a puzzle, and she scrutinizes each piece to create the perfect mosaic, and like every great puzzle master, there’s always a bigger challenge waiting.

All bios appear as they were submitted in the year of induction or award presentation.