‘It’s a Beautiful Thing, Writing Songs’: Inside the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Ceremony

The vibe for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame induction on Nov. 6 was a little odd.

Less than 24 hours after an election with results that many pundits see as a pushback against diversity, the Hall welcomed six new members whose output covered a nicely diverse stylistic landscape that touches on country, pop and R&B. 

The class featured two performing artists — The Bellamy Brothers’ David Bellamy and late multigenre figure Tony Joe White — plus Liz Rose (“You Belong With Me,” “Crazy Girl”), Victoria Shaw (“I Love the Way You Love Me,” “The River”), Al Anderson (“Unbelievable,” “Love’s Gonna Make It Alright”) and Dan Penn (“Cry Like a Baby,” “Do Right Woman — Do Right Man”).

It was just the third time in the Hall’s 54-year history that two women were inducted together. Prior to Rose and Shaw simultaneously joining, Shania Twain and Hillary Lindsey (“Blessed,” “Jesus, Take the Wheel”) were installed in 2022, and Tammy Wynette and Kye Fleming (“Smoky Mountain Rain,” “Nobody”) were recognized in 2009.

“It’s extra special that there’s two women this time,” Shaw noted in her acceptance speech. “Someday we won’t have to point that out, but it’s still nice.”

The diversity of the current class was represented by performances that ranged from swamp rock to gospel-flecked soul to pure country. Karen Fairchild applied a spiked tone to Little Big Town’s four-part harmony on Rose’s “Girl Crush,” Nikki Lane balanced a cutting vocal resonance against Kenny Vaughan’s smoky guitar on White’s bluesy “Polk Salad Annie,” and Garth Brooks milked the silence between the phrases in a folky rendition of the Shaw co-writes “A Friend to Me,” “She’s Every Woman” and “The River.” John Andersonoffered a greasy, driving interpretation of Bellamy’s “Redneck Girl”; Wendy Moten prefaced Penn’s induction with a dramatically dynamic version of the 1960s soul single “The Dark End of the Street”; and Vince Gill participated in Al Anderson’s segment by performing“Some Things Never Get Old,” a ballad Anderson recorded as a solo artist, with backing vocalist Carolyn Dawn Johnsonand bassist Glenn Worf.

Acceptance in the Hall is notable. It’s an unpredictable — and thus, insecure — vocation, and sustained success is often elusive. Bellamy recalled that his father pestered him to develop a backup plan in the early part of his career, assuming that songwriting wasn’t likely to pay the bills. Jim Stafford’s recording of Bellamy’s “Spiders and Snakes” changed that, starting a hit list that includes “Old Hippie,” “Kids of the Baby Boom” and “If I Said You Have a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me.”

“My dad called me — I was on the road somewhere,” Bellamy noted during his speech. “He had been to the mailbox and got my first royalty check. He said, ‘Son, I think you’re going to be able to make a living at this.’ ”

For Al Anderson, songwriting built upon his guitar skills, burnished during a run in the eclectic band NRBQ. He became adept at creating hooky, uptempo songs.

“He knows 400,000 chords,” fellow songwriter Sharon Vaughan (“Powerful Thing”) said while inducting Anderson. “During the writing of a song, he uses about 200,000 of them before you get to the second verse.”

Anderson was enthusiastic. He enlisted fellow writer Tia Sillers (“I Hope You Dance”) to speak on his behalf, and she stood at his side on a box, placing her at his eye level. But Anderson still got in a few words before leaving the stage.

“It’s a beautiful thing, writing songs,” he quipped. “You can’t beat it. It’s just the shit.”

Penn’s induction embodied the country/R&B blend that has become increasingly prominent in country circles. He fashioned hits for the likes of Ronnie Milsap,Johnny Rodriguez and T.G. Sheppard in the 1970s, though his journey was rooted more typically in pop and soul. His career started in earnest in the Muscle Shoals region and took off after he moved to Memphis, where he scored with James & Bobby Purify’s recording of “I’m Your Puppet” and James Carr’s “The Dark End of the Street.”

“Dark End” exemplifies Penn’s ability to fuse styles. It rose to prominence in the 1960s, when he still lived in Memphis, though he authored it during a break in a Nashville poker game. Despite its soul history, “Dark End” authors David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren recognized it in the Country Music Foundation book Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles. It fits both blue-collar genres in part because of its theme.

“We were always trying to come up with the best cheating song ever,” he was known to say, according to his inductor, songwriter Gretchen Peters (“Independence Day”).

White’s career path likewise wound through both Tennessee music capitals — son Jody White, in accepting his late father’s induction, recalled The Blues Brothers hanging out at the family’s house in Memphis and watching football at Waylon Jennings’Nashville home. White’s biggest copyright, “A Rainy Night in Georgia,” also transcended boundaries, providing soul singer Brook Benton with a classic recording and becoming a country hit for Hank Williams Jr.

“It just invokes a feeling of loneliness,” Jody said before ceremony, “and I think that’s what’s special about it. It’s hard to just make someone have that strong of a feeling by listening to your song.”

Rose is also a genre-hopper. While her songs have succeeded primarily in country, she’s co-written 17 Taylor Swift releases, and they include both country hits (“Tim McGraw,”  “Teardrops on My Guitar”) and music from her pop era (particularly the 10-minute “All Too Well”).

Despite the ceremony’s proximity to a contentious election, the Hall of Fame demonstrated how songwriters can pull together even when they disagree. A bit surprisingly, during the course of the evening, neither presenters nor inductees mentioned the election.

“What’s great about this community, everybody’s walking in that room, [feeling] part of the music community as songwriters,” Rose said on the red carpet. “There should be no politics. We all love each other, and that’s being an American.”

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