George Clinton, Doobie Brothers, Beach Boys’ Mike Love & More Are 2025 Songwriters Hall of Fame Inductees: Full List
Written by djfrosty on January 22, 2025
George Clinton, Ashley Gorley, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Mike Love, Tony Macaulay and three members of The Doobie Brothers (Tom Johnston, Michael McDonald and Patrick Simmons) are the 2025 inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The organization’s 2025 Induction and Awards Gala is slated for Thursday, June 12 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.
This is the first SHOF class to include no women since 2017. The SHOF, like most awards organizations, has been more mindful of gender diversity in recent years. The initial list of nominees included four women – Franne Golde, Sheryl Crow, Janet Jackson and Alanis Morissette – but none made it this year.
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Induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame ranks with the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song as the ultimate honor for a songwriter. A songwriter with a catalog of notable songs qualifies for induction 20 years after their first significant commercial release of a song.
Love is being ushered into the SHOF 25 years after Brian Wilson, his colleague in The Beach Boys, was honored by the organization.
Love, Clinton and the three Doobies have all been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Love was inducted in 1988 as a member of The Beach Boys; Clinton in 1997 as the leader of Parliament/Funkadelic; and The Doobies in 2020. The Beach Boys and P-Funk have also received lifetime achievement awards from the Recording Academy.
McDonald is a five-time Grammy winner. Simmons and Jerkins are both two-time Grammy winners. All three musicians have won record of the year — McDonald and Simmons as performers on The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes”; Jerkins for co-producing Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me (Darkchild Mix),” the subtitle a nod to Jerkins’ nickname.
Gorley, one of the top songwriters in country music, has been voted into the all-genre SHOF before he made it into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, a rarity for a Nashville writer. Gorley and Jerkins are both 47, which made them the youngest songwriters vying for induction this year.
Twenty-six songwriters or songwriting teams vied for induction into the SHOF this year. Just six were elected – three from 13 nominees in the performing songwriters category and three from 13 nominees in the songwriters category, which is reserved for non-performing songwriters. The nominations were announced on Nov. 12. Voting closed on Dec. 22.
The SHOF has yet to announce the recipients of its two honorary awards – the Johnny Mercer Award (a career-capping award) and the Hal David Starlight Award (which goes to a hot current writer).
Here’s a complete list of the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s 2025 nominees for induction, with those inducted flagged INDUCTED: and bolded. The SHOF supplied the five songs listed after each nominees’ name, which they stress “are merely a representative sample of their extensive catalogs.”
Songwriters
Walter Afanasieff – “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” “Hero,” “License to Kill,” “Love Will Survive,” “One Sweet Day”
Steve Barri and P.F. Sloan – “Secret Agent Man,” “Eve Of Destruction,” “Where Were You When I Needed You,” “You Baby,” “Can I Get to Know You”
Mike Chapman – “The Best,” “Love Is a Battlefield,” “Ballroom Blitz,” “Stumblin’ In,” “Kiss You All Over”
Sonny Curtis – “Love Is All Around (Theme from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”),” “I Fought the Law,” “Walk Right Back,” “More Than I Can Say,” “I’m No Stranger to the Rain”
Tom Douglas – “The House That Built Me,” “Little Rock,” “I Run to You,” “Grown Men Don’t Cry,” “Love Me Anyway”
Franne Golde – “Dreaming of You,” “Nightshift,” “Don’t Look Any Further,” “Don’t You Want Me,” “Stickwitu”
INDUCTED: Ashley Gorley – “I Had Some Help,” “Last Night,” “You Should Probably Leave,” “Play It Again,” “You’re Gonna Miss This”
INDUCTED: Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins – “Say My Name,” “The Boy Is Mine,” “You Rock My World,” “Déjà vu,” “Telephone”
Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter – “One Tin Soldier (Theme from “Billy Jack”),” “Don’t Pull Your Love,” “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got),” “It Only Takes a Minute,” “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In L.A.)”
INDUCTED: Tony Macaulay – “Baby Now That I’ve Found You,” “Build Me Up Buttercup,” “Don’t Give Up On Us,” “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep at All,” “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)”
Roger Nichols – “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Rainy Days and Mondays,” “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” “Out in the Country,” “Times of Your Life”
Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham – “I’m Your Puppet,” “Cry Like a Baby,” “A Woman Left Lonely,” “Out of Left Field,” “It Tears Me Up”
Narada Michael Walden – “How Will I Know,” “Freeway of Love,” “You’re a Friend of Mine,” “Baby Come to Me,” “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”
Performing Songwriters
Bryan Adams – “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” “Heaven,” “All for Love,” “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?,” “Summer of ‘69”
George Alan O’Dowd p/k/a Boy George – “Karma Chameleon,” “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” “Time (Clock Of The Heart), “Love Is Love,” “Miss Me Blind”
INDUCTED: George Clinton – “Atomic Dog,” “Flash Light,” “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” “I’d Rather Be With You,” “Give Up The Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)”
Sheryl Crow – “All I Wanna Do,” “Soak Up The Sun,” “If It Makes You Happy,” “A Change Would Do You Good,” “Everyday Is a Winding Road”
INDUCTED: Tom Johnston, Michael McDonald and Patrick Simmons p/k/a Doobie Brothers – “Listen to the Music,” “Takin’ It to the Streets,” “Black Water,” “What a Fool Believes,” “Long Train Runnin’”
Marshall Mathers p/k/a Eminem – “Lose Yourself,” “Stan,” “Mockingbird,” “Houdini,” “Rap God”
David Gates – “Everything I Own,” “Make It With You,” “Baby I’m-A Want You,” “The Guitar Man,” “If”
Janet Jackson – “Black Cat,” “Together Again,” “Again,” “Got ‘til It’s Gone,” “Rhythm Nation”
Tommy James – “Mony Mony,” “Crimson and Clover,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” “Sweet Cherry Wine,” “Tighter, Tighter”
INDUCTED: Mike Love – “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” “The Warmth of the Sun,” “I Get Around,” “Fun, Fun, Fun”
Alanis Morissette – “You Oughta Know,” “Ironic,” “Hand in My Pocket,” “Thank U,” “Uninvited”
Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella p/k/a N.W.A – “Express Yourself,” “Dopeman,” “Fu*k Tha Police,” “Gangsta Gangsta,” “Straight Outta Compton”
Steve Winwood – “Higher Love,” “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “I’m a Man,” “Valerie,” “Roll With It”