Songwriters Hall Of Fame
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Prince was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on Saturday (July 27) at a 40th anniversary screening of his film Purple Rain at Minneapolis’ Target Center. This is the second time this year that the SHOF has posthumously inducted a legendary songwriter. It honored the late Cindy Walker at an event in April.
Upon accepting the award from Gilbert Davison, a longtime professional colleague of Prince’s, Prince’s sister, Sharon L. Nelson, said, “You will always remember his songs. This is the award he wanted more than any other in life — to be known as a great songwriter.”
Why didn’t the SHOF didn’t get around to honoring Prince in his lifetime? He was selected for induction in 2013, but SHOF policy is that a songwriter has to personally attend the annual induction and awards gala to be officially inducted, and Prince’s schedule didn’t permit him to attend for a few years.
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SHOF president and CEO Linda Moran stated that the organization had been working with him to coordinate his schedule. “He reached out at the end of 2015 and said how important the award was to him and that the June 2016 ceremony could work,” Moran said in a statement. “We planned that it would be unannounced and a surprise; but unfortunately, Prince passed two months beforehand in April. It has been a long road, but we are thrilled that one of the world’s most prolific and phenomenal songwriters is finally a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.”
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A songwriter, producer, musician and pioneer of the Minneapolis Sound (which also included 2017 SHOF inductees Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis), Prince crossed genres with ease. Credited by his full name, Prince Rogers Nelson, he wrote every song in his catalog. He placed 19 songs in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, including five that went to No. 1: “When Doves Cry”; “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Kiss” (both credited to Prince and the Revolution); “Batdance”; and “Cream” (credited to Prince and the New Power Generation).
Prince also wrote hits for other artists including Sheena Easton, Kenny Rogers, Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Patti LaBelle, Celine Dion, Kate Bush and the Bangles. Several of his songs that he had recorded were also covered by other artists including Chaka Khan, Tom Jones, Sinéad O’Connor, Alicia Keys, the Pointer Sisters and Cyndi Lauper.
Prince won both an Oscar and a Grammy for his Purple Rain score. He also won a Grammy for best R&B song for writing “I Feel for You,” a 1984 smash for Khan. He was nominated for song of the year for writing “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a 1990 smash for O’Connor.
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Walker, whose most famous song is the cross-genre classic “You Don’t Know Me,” was inducted into the SHOF in a special event on April 19 at historic Columbia Studio A in Nashville. The ceremony took place during a SHOF Master Session with Liz Rose, a 2023 SHOF inductee. The event was co-hosted by SHOF board member Fletcher Foster, who chairs the SHOF Nashville Committee.
The annual SHOF gala in June does not normally include posthumous inductions, though this year’s inductees included Steely Dan, whose Walter Becker died in 2017. The SHOF prefers the June event to have a celebratory mood, but it intends to continue hosting posthumous inductions at unique venues and special events such as this one.
“The ceremony at Columbia Studio A was warm, intimate and respectful,” Foster said in a statement at the time of Walker’s induction. “SHOF president and CEO Linda Moran says this now sets the stage for future posthumous inductions.”
R.E.M. told CBS Mornings this week that it would take a comet for them to play together again. Well, apparently they saw one.
For the first time in nearly 16 years, the foursome reunited to sing “Losing My Religion” at the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala in New York on Thursday night (June 13).
The performance was preceded by Jason Isbell, who feted them with a spirited, note-perfect rendition of the tongue-twisting “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” a song he said he learned when he was 10 years old. “R.E.M. was greater than the sum of its parts. R.E.M. moved like a single instrument,” he said.
The Athens, Georgia, foursome — Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Bill Berry and Peter Buck — then came together onstage, with Stipe speaking for all four. “Writing songs and having a catalog of work that we’re all proud of that is out there for the rest of the world for all time is hands-down the most important aspect of what we did. Second to that is that we managed to do so all those decades and remain friends. And not just friends, dear friends,” he said.
“We are four people that very early on decided that we would own our own masters and we would split our royalties and songwriting credits equally,” he continued. “All for one and one for all.”
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In a gracious move, Stipe then quickly read a long list of thank yous to people that extended back to its early days on I.R.S. Records up through Warner Records, before concluding by thanking the band’s longtime manager Bertis Downs.
The band then took center stage, picked up their instruments and, as Stipe said, “Here’s what we did.”
The band’s last full concert was in November 2008 in Mexico City. The foursome played a private party for Downs in 2016 but had not performed publicly since 2008.
R.E.M. were among the 2024 inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Steely Dan (Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker) and Hillary Lindsey, Timothy Mosley (Timbaland), Dean Pitchford and the late Cindy Wlaker at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City on Thursday night.
“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.
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.
Legendary country songwriter Cindy Walker, whose most famous song is the cross-genre classic “You Don’t Know Me,” was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (SHOF) in a special event on April 19 at historic Columbia Studio A in Nashville.
The ceremony took place during a SHOF Master Session with Liz Rose, a 2023 SHOF inductee. Rose spoke fondly of her close relationship with the late songwriter and presented the award to Walker’s niece Molly Walker. Rose’s daughter Caitlin Rose performed “You Don’t Know Me,” which Walker co-wrote with Eddy Arnold, who had the initial hit with the song in 1956.
“This would’ve made her so proud,” Molly Walker said at the event. “And the thing that gets me is, when we hear Cindy’s songs, she’s still with us. I can’t tell you how much this would have meant to her and her family.”
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The event was hosted by Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. It was co-hosted by SHOF board member Fletcher Foster, who chairs the SHOF Nashville Committee.
The annual SHOF gala in June does not normally include posthumous inductions – though this year’s inductees include Steely Dan, whose Walter Becker died in 2017. The SHOF prefers the June event to have a celebratory mood. But it intends to continue hosting posthumous inductions at unique venues and special events such as this one.
“The ceremony at Columbia Studio A was warm, intimate, and respectful,” Foster said in a statement. “SHOF president and CEO Linda Moran says this now sets the stage for future posthumous inductions.”
Walker, who died in 2006 at age 87, was in the first class of inductees into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1997, she became the first female songwriter to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2009, Walker received the Poet’s Award from the Academy of Country Music.
In 2006, Willie Nelson’s album You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker, received a Grammy nomination for best country album. Fred Foster produced the album, which was released nine days before Walker’s death. The album included “Bubbles in My Beer,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Sugar Moon,” “I Don’t Care and “Cherokee Maiden.”
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Walker’s first recorded song was “Lone Star Trail,” recorded by Bing Crosby, the top star of the era. She wrote 50 songs that were recorded by Bob Wills, dubbed “the King of Western Swing.”
Walker even had a hit record as an artist in 1944. “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” reached No. 5 on Billboard’s Most Played Juke Box Folk Records, a forerunner to today’s Hot Country Songs.
Walker had numerous No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart across the decades, including “Sugar Moon” (Bob Wills, 1947), “Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me” (Eddy Arnold, 1950), “Cherokee Maiden” (Merle Haggard, 1976) and “You Don’t Know Me” (Mickey Gilley, 1981).
Ray Charles recorded “You Don’t Know Me” on his landmark 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which topped the Billboard 200 for 14 weeks. Charles’ version of the song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Walker’s many other hits include “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age” (Ernest Tubb & Red Foley, 1950), “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)” (Roy Orbison, 1962) and “Bubbles in My Beer” and “Distant Drums” (Jim Reeves).
Walker unquestionably paved the way for such top contemporary country songwriters as Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey. The latter is another of this year’s SHOF inductees, along with the aforementioned Steely Dan plus Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley, Dean Pitchford and R.E.M.
In addition to these inductees, Diane Warren is set to receive the Johnny Mercer Award, the organization’s top honor, and SZA is set to receive the Hal David Starlight Award, which recognizes up-and-coming talent.
Walker was a solitary writer. She once explained her approach by saying, “Picasso doesn’t have a co-painter.” But if an artist gave her the idea or title for a song, she would include them in the credits, such as Eddy Arnold, who gave her the idea for “You Don’t Know Me.”
Walker shares that tendency to write solo with Warren, this year’s Mercer Award recipient. Warren collaborates on occasion, but more often than not, she works alone.
Given the threads that link Walker with some of this year’s other inductees and honorees, it’s a shame that her induction was handled separately. The idea should be to demonstrate the common threads that unite songwriters across genres and generations.
A BMI writer, Walker wrote every day, rising at 5 a.m. with a cup of black coffee to start the day in her writing studio. She once said she knew a song was finished “…once I was ready to fight a room full of tigers not to change a single word.”
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R.E.M. will be the ninth collective of three or more songwriters to be inducted. Seven of them are performing groups. The other two teams worked behind-the-scenes.
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SZA will receive the Hal David Starlight Award at the 2024 Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards dinner on Thursday, June 13, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.
The award, named after the late lyricist and SHOF chairman emeritus, is presented to “gifted young songwriters who are making a significant impact in the music industry with their original songs,” according to the announcement.
It is meant as a balance to the Johnny Mercer Award, the organization’s top award, which is a career-capping honor. This year’s Mercer Award will be presented to Diane Warren. This marks only the second time that both the Mercer Award and the Hal David Starlight Award will be presented to female artists. In 2019, Carole Bayer Sager took the Mercer prize, while Halsey won the Starlight Award.
SZA will become the second Black woman to receive the honor, following Alicia Keys in 2005.
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SZA and Warren competed for an Academy Award for best original song in 2019. SZA was nominated for co-writing “All the Stars” from Black Panther; Warren for writing “I’ll Fight” from RBG, a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Neither song won. The award went to “Shallow” from A Star Is Born.
The “Snooze” singer was the most nominated artist at the 66th annual Grammy Awards, with nine nods. She won three Grammys in February for her sophomore album SOS, though she lost the top prize, album of the year, to Taylor Swift (the 2010 recipient of the Hal David Starlight Award).
“This is such an exciting time for songwriters and music,” SHOF chairman Nile Rodgers said in a statement. “Phenomenal artists like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are pushing the envelope of what success looks like, but who could argue that the last two years belong to SZA. Incredible songwriting, incredible performances, incredible artistry. She so deserves to be the 2024 recipient of the Hal David Starlight Award!”
SOS topped the all-genre Billboard 200 for 10 weeks and headed Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for 24 weeks. “Kill Bill” and “Snooze” reached No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts.
Previously announced 2024 inductees are Hillary Lindsey; Timothy Mosley (aka Timbaland); Dean Pitchford; R.E.M. (Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe) and Steely Dan (Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker).
Here’s the complete list of recipients of the Hal David Starlight Award.
2004: Rob Thomas (Matchbox Twenty)
2005: Alicia Keys
2006: John Mayer
2007: John Legend
2008: John Rzeznik (Goo Goo Dolls)
2009: Jason Mraz
2010: Taylor Swift
2011: Drake
2012: Ne-Yo
2013: Benny Blanco
2014: Dan Reynolds (Imagine Dragons)
2015: Nate Ruess (fun.)
2016: Nick Jonas (Jonas Brothers)
2017: Ed Sheeran
2018: Sara Bareilles
2019: Halsey
2022: Lil Nas X
2023: Post Malone
2024: SZA
Diane Warren is set to receive the 2024 Johnny Mercer Award at the Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala on Thursday, June 13 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.
The Mercer Award, the highest honor bestowed by the SHOF, is reserved for a songwriter or songwriting team who has already been inducted into the SHOF and whose body of work upholds the high standards set by Mercer, wrote dozens of hits from the 1930s through the 1960s. Learn more about Mercer here.
Warren will bethe fourth woman to receive the award on her own, following Carole King (2002), Dolly Parton (2007) and Carole Bayer Sager (2019). In addition, three songwriting teams with a female partner have won the honor – Betty Comden & Adolph Green (1991), Alan & Marilyn Bergman (1997), and Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil (2011).
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The recipient of a second honorary award, the Hal David Starlight Award, will be announced at a later date.
Warren, 67, has won a Grammy, a Primetime Emmy and two Golden Globes. In November 2022, she became the first songwriter to receive a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
Most notably, Warren is one of just six individuals in Oscar history to receive 15 or more nominations for best original song. The other members of this elite club are Sammy Cahn (26 nominations), Mercer (18), Paul Francis Webster (16) and Marilyn and Alan Bergman (15).
Warren has been in the running for best original song the last seven years in a row. That’s the longest continuous streak of nominations in this category since Cahn was nominated eight years running – from 1954-61. Warren’s current nomination is for “The Fire Inside,” performed by Becky G for the film Flamin’ Hot. While it seems to stand little chance of beating the favorite, “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie, it’s practically a foregone conclusion that Warren will be back in the running again.
“The songwriting community is filled with many special people who have delivered incomparable songs that have made the world go round,” SHOF chairman Nile Rodgers said in a statement. “Within that special group of people, Diane Warren is unique; she is a force of nature that, despite her enormous success … she shows up to write songs every morning at 8 a.m.!”
Rodgers’ statement hints at what may be the secret of Warren’s success – a work ethic that is second-to-none.
In a statement, Warren said, “I’m beyond honored to receive the Johnny Mercer Award, especially looking at the names of the other songwriters who have gotten this great honor. When I was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, my mom was there and finally understood that I could make a living and life being what I was born to be and wake up every day loving to be… a songwriter. Now, both she and my dad will be looking down on me with big smiles on their faces. Thank you, Songwriters Hall of Fame.”
A personal note: Back in the 1980s, when I wrote the Chart Beat column in Billboard, Warren’s father called me out of the blue to tout his daughter’s chart successes, an extraordinary show of parental pride and support.
Warren has written or co-written 33 top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, spanning more than 40 years. Her first top 10 hit was Laura Branigan‘s “Solitaire” in May 1983. Her most recent was Taylor Swift’s “Say Don’t Go (Taylor’s Version) [From the Vault]” in November 2023. Swift and Warren co-wrote the song in 2013 for 1989 but it was shelved until the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
Among Warren’s 33 top 10 hits, she has penned nine No. 1s, from Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” in 1987 (also her first Oscar nominee for best original song) through Brandy’s “Have You Ever?” in 1999.
Warren is the sole owner of Realsongs, her publishing company, which is the most successful female-owned and operated business in the music industry.
Warren was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, along with two other songwriters who went on to receive the Mercer Award – Parton and Paul Williams. (The other members of that especially strong class were Willie Nelson and Eric Clapton.)
Three “non-performing” songwriters – Hillary Lindsey, Timothy Mosley (Timbaland) and Dean Pitchford – and members of two groups – Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) and Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (Steely Dan) – are this year’s inductees into the SHOF.
A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.
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 (SHOF) will celebrate this year’s Oscar nominees for best original song with a virtual roundtable. The annual discussion, which is in its eighth year, is viewable for free at songhall.org from Thursday Feb. 8 at 9 a.m. PT through March 10. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest […]
Less than two weeks after she won a CMA Award for song of the year for her classic “Fast Car,” Tracy Chapman was nominated to join the 2024 class of inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (SHOF). Twelve performing songwriters and 10 non-performing songwriters are nominated. Three songwriters from each of those categories will be inducted at the 2024 SHOF Induction & Awards Gala in New York City in June 2024.
Hillary Lindsey, who was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022, is nominated here, as is Dean Dillon, a 2002 inductee into the Nashville SHOF.
Seven of this year’s SHOF nominees are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – George Clinton (Parliament/Funkadelic went into the Rock Hall in 1997); Donald Fagen & Walter Becker (Steely Dan was honored by the Rock Hall in 2001); Debbie Harry, Chris Stein & Clem Burke (Blondie got the Rock Hall nod in 2006); Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills & Michael Stipe (R.E.M. was honored by the Rock Hall in 2007); Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson (Heart was saluted by the Rock Hall in 2013); Chuck D and Flavor Flav (Public Enemy went into the Rock Hall in 2013); and Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons & Michael McDonald (The Doobie Brothers got the Rock Hall nod in 2020).
Becker, who died in 2017, is this year’s only posthumous nominee.
Kenny Loggins and Dean Pitchford, who collaborated on Loggins’ 1984 smash “Footloose,” a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, are separately nominated.
Fourteen songwriters are nominated as individuals. Five two-member teams are nominated, as are two three-member teams and one four-member team (the former members of R.E.M.)
A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first significant commercial release of a song. Eligible voting members have until midnight ET on Dec. 27 to turn in ballots, with their choices of three nominees from each category.
Here’s the complete list of SHOF’s 2024 nominees. The SHOF supplied the five song titles that are listed after each songwriter’s name. The organization stresses “Please note that the five songs listed after each nominee are merely a representative sample of their extensive catalogs.” In many cases here, that’s an understatement.
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”
Randy Bachman & Burton Cummings – “These Eyes,” “American Woman,” “Laughing,” “No Time,” “No Sugar Tonight”
Debbie Harry, Chris Stein & Clem Burke p/k/a Blondie – “Call Me,” “Heart of Glass,” “Rapture,” “One Way or Another,” “Sunday Girl”
Tracy Chapman – “Fast Car,” “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution,” “Give Me One Reason,” “Baby Can I Hold You,” “Sing for You”
George Clinton – “Atomic Dog,” “Flashlight,” “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” “P-Funk,” “Give Up the Funk”
Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons & Michael McDonald p/k/a Doobie Brothers – “Listen to the Music,” “Long Train Runnin,’” “What a Fool Believes,” “China Grove,” “Black Water”
David Gates – “Everything I Own,” “Make It With You,” “Baby I’m-a Want You,” “The Guitar Man,” “If”
Ann Wilson & Nancy Wilson p/k/a Heart – “Barracuda,” “Crazy on You,” “Dog and Butterfly,” “Straight On,” “Even It Up”
Kenny Loggins – “Danny’s Song,” “Footloose,” “Celebrate Me Home,” “Return to Pooh Corner,” “What a Fool Believes”
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour p/k/a Chuck D, William Jonathan Drayton p/k/a Flavor Flav, p/k/a Public Enemy – “Fight the Power,” “Bring the Noise,” “Don’t Believe the Hype,” “Can’t Truss It,” Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”
Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills & Michael Stipe, p/k/a R.E.M. – “Losing My Religion,” “Everybody Hurts,” “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” “Radio Free Europe,” “The One I Love”
Donald Fagan & Walter Becker p/k/a Steely Dan – “Reelin’ in the Years,” “My Old School,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Black Friday,” “Kid Charlemagne”
Non-Performing Songwriters
L. Russell Brown – “Sock It to Me – Baby!,” “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” “C’mon Marianne,” “Knock Three Times,” “Use It Up and Wear It Out”
Dean Dillon – “Tennessee Whiskey,” “Ocean Front Property,” “Here For a Good Time,” “The Chair,” “I’m Alive”
Dennis Lambert & Brian Potter – “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got),” “Don’t Pull Your Love,” “Nightshift,” “One Tin Soldier (Theme from Billy Jack),” “We Built This City”
Hillary Lindsey – “Jesus Take the Wheel,” “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” “Girl Crush,” “Always Remember Us This Way,” “Million Reasons”
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)”
Timothy Mosley p/k/a Timbaland – “Sexy Back,” “Get Yer Freak On,” “Pony,” “Big Pimpin,’” “The Way I Are”
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”
Dean Pitchford – “Footloose,” “Fame,” “Holding Out for a Hero,” “All the Man That I Need,” “Let’s Hear It for the Boy”
Maurice Starr – “Candy Girl,” “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever),” “Is This the End,” “Step by Step,” “Popcorn Love”
Narada Michael Walden – “How Will I Know,” “Freeway of Love,” “Who’s Zoomin’ Who,” “I Don’t Wanna Cry,” “I Shoulda Loved Ya”