Library of Congress adds Taylor Swift, Beyoncé to recording registry

The Library of Congress widened its definition of American musical memory with a new class that put Taylor Swift and Beyoncé into the National Recording Registry for the first time, alongside country, R&B and rock recordings that trace 70 years of sound history.

Acting Librarian of Congress Robert R. Newlen named 25 recordings for 2026, lifting the registry total to 700 titles. The selections were drawn from more than 3,000 public nominations, a sign that the archive is still being shaped not just by scholars and curators, but by listeners who want their era’s music preserved. The library said the registry exists to increase preservation awareness and showcase the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage.

The headline entries make the cultural shift clear. Swift’s 2014 album 1989 and Beyoncé’s Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) joined the archive as the first recordings by either artist to be added. Chaka Khan’s I Feel for You, Vince Gill’s Go Rest High on That Mountain and The Go-Go’s Beauty and the Beat were also selected, placing women-led mainstream pop and R&B squarely inside the national canon. The message is less about celebrity than about how institutions now define canon-worthy work: hits once treated as commercial milestones are increasingly being recognized as cultural artifacts.

The class also leaned hard into genre history. Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, a landmark country crossover album, was selected with Reba McEntire’s Rumor Has It and Rosanne Cash’s The Wheel, underscoring how country music’s place in the national story is now being told through women as much as men. Rosanne Cash’s selection created another first, because it made her and Johnny Cash the registry’s first father-daughter pairing after At Folsom Prison was added in 2003.

The range extended well beyond pop and country. Weezer’s The Blue Album was among the year’s most nominated recordings, while the soundtrack to the 1993 video game Doom became only the third video game music selection ever added. The lone non-musical entry was the 1971 Ali-Frazier Fight of the Century broadcast, preserving a moment when sports, television and national attention collided at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The archive’s oldest 2026 selection was Spike Jones and His City Slickers’ 1944 Cocktails for Two, while the newest was Swift’s 1989. That span, from wartime novelty to 21st-century pop domination, shows how the registry has become more than a hall of fame. It is a changing ledger of what Americans have listened to, argued over and decided was worth keeping.