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“Losing My Religion” was the unlikeliest of hits for R.E.M., Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” was created at a girls’ songwriting sleepover weekend and, “yeah,” that’s Timbaland’s voice you hear on Justin Timberlake’s hit “SexyBack.”
Ahead of the 53rd annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala on Thursday (June 13) at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York, some of this year’s inductees and honorees share stories behind their biggest hits and the songs that hit closest to home, in their own words.
The 2024 class consists of Hillary Lindsey, Dean Pitchford, R.E.M., Steely Dan, Timbaland and the late Cindy Walker. Diane Warren will be honored with the Johnny Mercer Award and SZA will receive the Hal David Starlight Award.
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Hillary Lindsey
“Girl Crush” Co-written with Lori McKenna, Liz Rose Recorded by Little Big Town
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The Grammy-, CMA- and Nashville Songwriters Association International-winning song that spent 13 weeks at the top of the Hot Country Songs chart in 2015 had a spontaneous start. “The three of us are dear friends and once a month we’d do two-night sleepovers at Liz’s house and dive into writing. This was one of those times,” Lindsey says. “I didn’t know it, but Lori had this title ‘Girl Crush’ in her head, and she apparently asked Liz and Liz had said the title sounded cool but might be too hard. I came in and Lori asked me, ‘What do you think about this title?’ It could’ve gone lots of directions, and it was one of those miraculous moments that can happen when you’re creating. I picked up the guitar and played chords and the words just started popping out. It was one of those songs we didn’t put a lot of thought into. We were all throwing out lines and we probably wrote it in 45 minutes.
“Then the girls of Little Big Town were coming over for a write-in. Karen [Fairchild] said, ‘Do you all have anything you’ve written that you love?’ And Liz was like, ‘Well, we do have this song we wrote this morning.’ I was scared out of my mind; I thought we needed to make it sound better. We’d just put it down on our phones on a voice memo so we wouldn’t forget it. And they both just sat there in silence with their eyes real big and we were like, ‘Do you hate it? Do you love it?’ And then they were like, ‘Oh my God, this is a beast of a song.’ Jay Joyce [the producer] took it to the utmost next level. It was otherworldly. He heard it in its raw form and the band just made it shine.”
Dean Pitchford
“Footloose” Co-written and recorded by Kenny Loggins
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Loggins was Pitchford’s top choice for the Footloose title song, which spent three weeks at No. 1 and was nominated for an Oscar in 1984 — and Pitchford went to great lengths to seal the deal. The soundtrack, which produced six Hot 100 top 40 hits, knocked Michael Jackson’s Thriller out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, where it spent 10 weeks. “Kenny had a very big pop career at that point. He sort of auditioned me by giving me a cassette with a melody he and Steve Perry had come up with. All he would say is it was called ‘Don’t Fight It.’ So I wrote the lyric, and he and Steve loved it. They recorded a duet and got a Grammy nomination. And we found out about the nomination while we were in the trailer at Paramount on preproduction on Footloose,” Pitchford says.
“I came to him with the movie script and said, ‘I want to work with you to write the title song.’ He was seduced by reading the script. Paramount was not taking for granted that I had Kenny onboard until they heard something. And then something happened that put us into a great bind. At a gig in Utah, Kenny came out in the dark and walked off the edge of the stage and broke three ribs. He was laid up and recovering because he was leaving for a tour of Asia in four weeks, and now the clock is ticking. I finally got a call from his manager, who said he was going to play one weekend in Lake Tahoe before he goes to Asia and, ‘If you can get yourself to Tahoe I can put you in a room with Kenny.’ The night before I came down with strep throat; I never mentioned it to Kenny. I called it our house of pain because I was running into the bathroom and spraying my throat with Chloraseptic and he was strumming the guitar, which was obviously causing pain. We ended up creating the verse and the chorus of the song. And I had enough to go back to L.A. and say to the executives, ‘He’s in.’”
R.E.M.
“Losing My Religion” Written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe
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The second song on the band’s seventh album, Out of Time, spent 21 weeks on the Hot 100, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017 and in 2022 reached one billion YouTube views. But as Mike Mills recalls, it didn’t scream hit. “It’s a five-minute song with no chorus and the lead-in is a mandolin. It was a really cool song… but that is not a recipe for a hit single. We never really thought about songs in terms of, ‘This is going to be a big hit.’ We just wrote the best songs we could. And we always tried to make timeless records. That song was driven by our desire to explore different instruments and ways of writing, [since] we were really writing good songs at that point. And it tapped into a zeitgeist that really worked. I believe in the record company’s mind it was sort of a warm-up track for ‘Shiny Happy People’ or some other thing they thought would be a big hit,” he says.
“Peter [Buck] had begun playing the mandolin all the way back to [our 1988 sixth album] Green and was becoming very proficient, and he came up with basically the whole song. As I remember, when he showed it to us it was fully formed so all we had to do was come up with our parts. I was having a little difficulty with the bass line. It needed to have some element of identity without getting in the way of the mandolin. And I thought, ‘What would John McVie do? I tried to put myself in John McVie’s head and came up with a very simply change that, to me, made all the difference. It’s a simple low F sharp before the minor E chord. That’s all it was, but it gave the song a little bit of darkness. It’s the only time I recall turning to another bass player for help, as it were.”
Timbaland
“SexyBack” Co-written with Justin Timberlake, Nate “Danja” Hills Recorded by Justin Timberlake
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Co-written and produced by Tim Mosely, aka Timbaland, the song that served as a re-introduction for Justin Timberlake was certified three times platinum by the RIAA and delivered him a No. 1 on the Hot 100 in September 2006. “It all started by really being bold,” Timbaland recalls. “We knew people were going to love it — and we knew especially the women would go crazy. Because it was a call-to-action song. It makes you feel good and has something about it that gets your attention. What we were going for was that old David Bowie sound, back in the day when rock n’ roll was in a disruptive space. We were trying to re-create that in [Timberlake’s 2006 sophomore album] FutureSex/LoveSounds. We were going for something different. I thought the way Justin approached it was so futuristic but felt so nostalgic that I knew it was going to shock the world. People were used to him coming off *NSYNC. And the funny thing is, the label came in and they were like, ‘What is this?’ But we knew what it was. We knew it was disruptive. It’s like that Michael Jackson Thriller moment.”
“When we were coming up with the song, Justin was like, ‘This song feels like I’m bringing sexy back.’ And I said, “Yeah.” The way I talk is in rhythm, so ‘yeah’ came out [and] it just fit in the track. And he was like, ‘This is it; this is the song.’ And I thought we should really swag it out, so we did. I was more fascinated about the sound taking over the world than it being No. 1, to be honest. I think what we did was we made dance music come back. And that to me was the moment. My real impact was, ‘Did we change how people view [Justin]?’ Yes, we did that.”
Diane Warren
“I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,” recorded by Aerosmith; “Here’s To The Nights,” recorded by Ringo Starr and friends
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Warren delivered Aerosmith’s only No. 1 on the Hot 100, where it remained for four weeks in 1998 — one of the songwriting legend’s nine chart-topping hits. “I never, ever thought Aerosmith would do my song. They just don’t do that. I wasn’t in the studio when they were recording so it went from me teaching Steven Tyler the song at the piano to someone sending me the CD and hearing the finished record. I was blown out of my chair; it was so great. I think to this day I’m the only outside songwriter [they’ve worked with].
And while Warren has already received a Grammy, a Primetime Emmy, two Golden Globes, 15 Oscar nominations, and in 2022 became the first-ever songwriter to receive a Governor’s Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, she says the “coolest thing that’s ever happened” is getting two members of the Beatles on her song, “Here’s to the Nights.” As she recalls, “A few years ago Ringo asked me for a song and it was basically, ‘Here’s to the nights we won’t remember with the friends we won’t forget.’ My idea when I gave him the song was, ‘Let’s get your old friends and some new friends on there singing along.’ And my whole intention was to get Paul McCartney. And Paul McCartney was the first person who said yes to Ringo. So I have two f—ing Beatles on my song. And also the other artists on that song — Lenny Kravitz, Dave Grohl, Joe Walsh, Sheryl Crow, Finneas… it’s a Who’s Who.”
Despite such memories, Warren insists, “I’m writing my best songs now. I’m working with so many great artists in all genres, whether its country or Afrobeats, whether its Angélique Kidjo to Kesha, or David Guetta in the dance world with Steve Aoki. I just did a great song with The War and Treaty that I think is going to be their career song. It’s one of those songs when you hear it you stop everything and listen. I just heard a mix and I was in tears. I love to do a song that changes someone’s life, whether it’s a new artist or an established artist.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The 2024 Billboard Latin Women in Music event honored eight powerful and admirable mujeres in the industry, including Gloria Estefan, who received the legend award; Ana Bárbara, who received the lifetime achievement award; and La India, who received the pioneer award. This year’s woman of the year was Karol G — who was unable to […]
Kevin Bacon, the star of Footloose, and Deniece Williams, who had a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” from that iconic film, will be on hand when Dean Pitchford, who wrote the screenplay and co-wrote all of the songs from the 1984 blockbuster, is inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on Thursday, June 13, at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York City.
Bacon will appear in tandem with his brother Michael Bacon as The Bacon Brothers. “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” brought Williams a Grammy nomination best pop vocal performance, female and an invitation to perform on the Oscars in 1985, where the song was nominated for best original song.
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Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban, who had career-defining hits with songs co-written by Hillary Lindsey, will also be on hand as she is inducted into the SHOF. Underwood won a Grammy for best female country vocal performance for “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” Urban was nominated for best country solo performance for “Blue Ain’t Your Color.” Lindsey also won Grammys for best country song for co-writing both songs.
Missy Elliott will be on hand as Timbaland (Timothy Mosley) is honored. Mosley cowrote four of Elliott’s top 10 hits on the Hot 100: “Hot Boyz,” “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It” and “Gossip Folks.”
El DeBarge will be on hand as Diane Warren receives the Johnny Mercer Award, the organization’s highest honor. The group DeBarge’s 1985 smash “Rhythm of the Night” was one of Warren’s first hits, and brought her the first of a remarkable 15 Oscar nominations for best original song.
Other performers who will be on hand to present or perform at Thursday’s event are Trey Anastasio, Cary Barlowe, Andra Day, Jason Isbell, Nile Rodgers and Paul Williams. Rodgers is chairman of the SHOF. Williams is on the board of directors. Both veteran songwriters are past SHOF inductees.
Inductees at this year’s event, not already named, are R.E.M. (Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe) and Steely Dan (Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker). SZA will receive the Hal David Starlight Award.
The SHOF doesn’t reveal in advance who is on hand to honor who. These are educated guesses, given the strong connections between these performers or presenters and these honorees.
Tickets for the Songwriters Hall of Fame event begin at $2,000 each, and are available through Buckley Hall Events, 914-579-1000 and SHOF@buckleyhallevents.com. Net proceeds from the event will go toward Songwriters Hall of Fame programs. The Songwriters Hall of Fame is a 501(c)3 organization. The non-deductible portion of each ticket is $215.
A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.
06/10/2024
This star-studded list will get you in the mood for this year’s Tonys, which are set for Sunday June 16.
06/10/2024
Tears, parents, emotional performances and lots of gratitude and respect for Gloria Estefan marked Billboard’s second annual Latin Women In Music gala on June 9 in Miami.
Produced by Telemundo, the show, which aired Sunday night, honored revered icons of Latin music like Gloria Estefan (the Legend Award), salsa Legend La India (the Pioneer Award) and Mexican Powerhouse Ana Bárbara (Lifetime Achievement), as well as Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Kany García (Spirit of Change), Mexican prodigy Ángela Aguilar (Musical Dynasty), Colombian chart topper Kali Uchis (Rising Star) and this month’s Billboard cover star, Camila Cabello (Global Impact).
The show was pre-taped at Telemundo’s studios (with production headed by Cisco Suárez and Macarena Moreno) in Miami, and perhaps the smaller setting, combined with fully live performances, gave the evening a sense of intimacy, collegiality and love — corny as that may sound — that is not usually felt at big award shows.
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“It’s an honor to honor someone who writes her own story,” said Mexican star María José early in the evening as she presented the Lifetime Achievement Award. “Ana Bárbara is an example of someone who does not put brakes on herself. I identify with that strength and determination with which she has chosen to be an artist, but above all, the woman she is.”
It was an assessment that could have well applied to all the honorees in the room, all pioneers in their own right. Even Angela Aguilar, the youngest among them, at 20 years old, and the daughter and granddaughter of legends — Pepe Aguilar, Antonio Aguilar, Flor Silvestre — said as much: “In between this great legacy and this great last name, I’m still trying to find who I am.”
It was uncommon honesty expressed again and again throughout the evening, by the “newer” artists, but also the veterans. La India, emotional as a singer and as a speaker, belted “Ese Hombre” and her classic “Vivir Lo Nuestro,” then shed tears as she thanked her icons — the late Celia Cruz and the living Gloria Estefan — and acknowledged that artists have ups and downs. Ana Bárbara, the first honoree of the night, admitted that when she had first visited Miami, many, many years ago, her dream was to meet Estefan, the great door-opening star that was honored with the Legend award, and who sat through the entire evening cheering her colleagues on.
The sentiment was echoed by García, who said: “I love being among all these women I so admire. The first award show I ever went to in my life, they honored Gloria Estefan, and to see her seated here is one of the most beautiful things in the world.”
Parents were also a recurring theme of the evening. Camila Cabello devoted most of her speech to her mother: “When the world is suffering […] my mom reminds me there is love in this world. I love you, mom. And I love you, Gloria Estefan.”
In the other direction, Aguilar received warm words from her dad, Pepe Aguilar, who sent her a video from Japan, where he is currently.
And at the close of the evening, the Woman of the Year award for Karol G — honored in absentia because she was kicking off her European tour the same evening — was picked up by her father, Guillermo Giraldo.
“Thank you, Billboard, thank you, Telemundo, for opening the door to this little girl who at five years old sang backup for this artist [Giraldo himself is an artist] who wasn’t successful, but who today picks up her recognition as Woman of the Year.”
The evening, after all, was a celebration of doors opening, as Billboard extends its Woman of the Year franchise to the Latin realm.
“Thank you, Billboard, for doing this for women,” said Ana Bárbara receiving her award. “We have many barriers to tear down yet, but we’re doing well.”
Camila Cabello was honored with the Global Impact award at the 2024 Billboard Latin Women in Music event that aired on Sunday night (June 9) on Telemundo. During her speech, the Cuban-American singer-songwriter thanked the biggest female inspiration in her life: her mother, Sinuhe Estrabao. Highlighting her strength and ability to comfort her during difficult […]
Ángela Aguilar was honored with the Musical Dynasty award at the 2024 Billboard Latin Women in Music ceremony on Sunday night (June 9), where she was also the youngest of the eight honorees. “The legacy I’ve had the privilege of forming part of has been beautiful and full of joy, trajectory and music that when […]
Kany García, a lifelong champion of change and social justice, was honored with the Spirit of Change award at the Billboard Latin Women in Music 2024 gala, which aired Sunday from Miami’s Telemundo Center. Accompanied by an eight-piece pop/rock band, the Puerto Rican singer-songwriter performed her new autobiographical song “García” and her hit “Te Lo […]
The 2024 Billboard Latin Women in Music Awards are set to air at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday (June 9) via Telemundo.
This year’s honorees include: Gloria Estefan (Legend Award), La India (Pioneer Award), Ana Bárbara (Lifetime Achievement Award), Kany García (Spirit of Hope Award), Kali Uchis (Rising Star Award), Ángela Aguilar (Musical Dynasty Award), Camila Cabello (Global Impact Award) and Woman of the Year Karol G.
Billboard caught up with some of the star-studded night’s guests to share a sneak peek of what fans can expect from their performances at the ceremony.
Ana Bárbara: “It’s a medley of some of the hits that my fans have made possible, because they are not mine — they are part of the people, really. I will give this to them with lots of love, and thank you, Billboard, for thinking of this Mexican woman for this grand moment.”
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Kali Uchis: “This last month and a half has been a blur. I’ve been pretty tired, but I was just excited to come and be honored. I’m going to do a performance that’s stripped back, really jazzy. It’s going to be a lot of fun and very freestyle.”
Kany Garcia: “I’m going to sing ‘García’ and ‘Te Lo Agradezco.’ I’m happy because when you have the opportunity to do two songs — one with the illusion of what is coming and that just launched, and another that allows you to have that retrospective moment that has brought you a lot of wonderful things— it’s like a perfect moment.
María José: “I’m going to premiere my new single, ‘Mi Rey, Mi Santo,’ with a composition by Ana Bárbara, and also sing it as a duet with her. Imagine on this day that we are giving her a special award for her career. I am giving it to her and suddenly having this premiere with her, on this night. It’s triple special.”
Julianna: “I am going to participate in the tribute of who I believe is one of the most incredible artists that the world of music has had in the world. I am deeply happy to sing a song that is a Latin American anthem. I admire Gloria Estefan’s ability to be integral and her tenacity to get up as many times as necessary to continue doing what she loved.”
When Lainey Wilson was 9, she and her family made their first trip to the Grand Ole Opry from her small hometown of Baskin, Louisiana, 471 miles away, and she knew that one day she would be on that revered stage. More than 20 years later, she reached the pinnacle for any country artist by being inducted to the Grand Ole Opry.
Friday night (June 7), she became the latest artist to stand in the famed wood circle as Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks did the official induction honors. “Tonight, it honestly feels like the biggest night of my life,” Wilson said.
“We are honored to be here tonight,” Yearwood said, “And I may be a little bit biased, but there can never be enough women inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. You get it. You know what it means to love country music, you love the Opry. When I think about the future of country music, I know with you in it, we’re going to be OK.”
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Grand Ole Opry/Photo by Chris Hollo
“I would say I’m so happy for you, but I’m so happy for the Grand Ole Opry,” added Brooks. “It’s just so rare to find someone at your age that gets it. The awards they give you will fade in time, but the thing that will always stay the same is this family.”
For Wilson, the induction caps a meteoric last several months that has seen her latest album, Bell Bottom Country, capture the ACM and CMA Awards for album of the year and the Grammy Award for best country album, as well as winning entertainer of the year at both the ACM and CMA Awards. She also graced the cover of Billboard‘s Country Power Players issue last month. But Wilson vowed to only work harder. “We’ve had a crazy couple of years with all the awards, but this right here is the highest honor,” she said. “It feels like the stamp of approval. It lights another fire under my butt.”
Wilson then brought her immediate family, as well as her boyfriend, Devlin “Duck” Hodges, to the stage. Surrounded by those who know her best and have supported her through the decades, she added, “As a little girl, I didn’t dream about my wedding day or what song I would play at my wedding, I dreamed about what song I would play in the circle.” After that initial visit to the Opry when she was 9, nine years later she moved to Nashville and nine years after that, she played the Opry for the first time on Valentine’s Day 2020. Four years later she became a member.
Wilson played throughout the night, first joining Terri Clark (who introduced her when she played the Opry that first time in 2020) for a duet on “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,” then returning to sing “Refugee,” with Wynonna, the song the pair covered for the upcoming Tom Petty tribute album. She also performed a number of her own tunes, including “Dreamcatcher”; her first No. 1, “Things a Man Oughta Know”; “Heart Like a Truck” and “Watermelon Moonshine.”
After her official induction, Brooks told Wilson she had to sing at least one more tune, saying, “I’ve never gotten to hear you sing a song as an official member of the Grand Ole Opry.” He offered to hold her newly presented trophy, and Wilson allowed him to only after he promised to give it back. She closed the evening with a spirited version of “Hang Tight Honey” from her new album, Whirlwind, out Aug. 23 on Broken Bow/BMG.