Taylor Swift revealed a prank Brad Paisley pulled on her that went “too far.”

Paisley stands by it.

Paisley introduced Swift to the stage when she made history as the youngest inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame at a gala on Monday evening (October 26) at Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Swift, now 36, was 17 when she toured with Paisley in 2007. She joked that she’s “been estranged” from him since then because “he took a tour prank too far, filled my entire tour bus with live crickets, thousands of them. For months I couldn’t sleep. ...All night I considered buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem. It was a dark time. But you know what, you did such an amazing job with that introduction, I think we can let bygones be bygones. Yeah, I think we’re good now.”

Nearly 20 years later, Paisley has no regrets.

He posted on Instagram on Tuesday (October 27), “So honored [Lainey Wilson, who covered “Love Story”] and I got to induct [Taylor Swift] into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame last night. All joking and tour pranks aside, what better example has there ever been of ‘it all starts with a song’ than this world of music she has built.

“But I also stand by the crickets on the tour bus as a legit truly boss prank,” Paisley wrote.

Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, 55, have remained friends with Swift over the years. They attended her wedding when she said “I do” to Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce in July in New York City. Swift also made a “transformative” donation to The Store, a Nashville-based nonprofit started by Paisley and Williams-Paisley, before her wedding. Paisley previously told the Associated Press, “They were very clear with the invite — I took this personally when I got the invite, because in the invite, it said, ‘if you’re getting this, you mean a lot to us.’ And it was really fun to watch the cat-and-mouse game of like, ‘we can tell you roughly where it’s gonna be. We’re not gonna say what building. We’re not gonna say — and here’s the date. If you’re in, we’ll tell you more.’ I went to my wife, I said, ‘wanna go?’ And she’s like, ‘absolutely. We gotta be there.’ …It meant a lot to be — it was kind of a big ‘thank you’ from her to invite us.”

Swift, who recently celebrated 20 years since her debut album released, was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Lyle Lovett, Bruce Channel, Shawn Camp, Lee Thomas Miller and J.I. Allison. Country legend George Strait was also honored with the Career Maker Award.

Bob Pickett