Kanye West revealed last night that his third single "All of the Lights" will feature 11 other artists including Kid Cudi.
Kanye's G.O.O.D. Friday leaks have featured some very large guest lists, but all of those will pale in comparison to Kanye's third single. Last night in Los Angeles Mr. West aired a short screening of his film Runaway, where he revealed that the next single would feature 11 artists.
Hip Hop fans may be a bit disappointed as this cast doesn't feature his usual emcee collaborators, but Kid Cudi and 10 singers. Those who 'Ye said will appear are Rihanna, Alicia Keys, John Legend, The-Dream, Tony Williams, Charlie Wilson, Ryan Leslie, Fergie, La Roux’s Elly Jackson, the aforementioned Kid Cudi and Rock legend Elton John.
The Louis Vuitton Don didn't include full verses from each, but bits and pieces and described the track as “completely seamless and completely ghetto as fuck.” The song will be heard in his 35-minute Runaway film, premiering Saturday, October 23, at 8 EST.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy drops November 22.
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Cheryl Cole has been confirmed to perform on this weekend's X Factor live results show.
The Girls Aloud singer will take to the stage on Sunday to perform new material, believed to be upcoming single 'The Flood' from her second solo album Messy Little Raindrops.
A post on the official X Factor website read: "It’s official! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... our very own Cheryl is going to perform on The X Factor this weekend!
"Yes during Sunday’s show the Girls' mentor will transform into her other role as global pop superstar, and treat us to some of her new material! It's all very exciting!
"After her performance she will then no doubt effortlessly re-assume her role as judge, in time for the dreaded sing-off."
The X Factor results show airs on Sunday at 8pm on ITV1.
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That album of Michael Jackson‘s unreleased material?
I’ll tell you what: it’s in limbo.
Later this week we may get a sharper picture of what’s going on. But this much I’ve surmised from talks with various sources.
The best material available really comes from those sessions with Eddie Cascio in New Jersey circa summer 2007. Some of the songs were already written by Eddie’s brother Frank Cascio and recorded as demos with a local singer named Bobby Ewing. Michael put his vocals on them during that time he stayed with the Cascios in New Jersey.
At first there was a lot of skepticism about the tracks. I’m told that co-executor John McClain questioned whether the vocals were really Michael’s, or faked. But they are Michael’s. And they will be needed to round out the selections.
Teddy Riley and a couple of other producers have worked to fix up the Cascio tracks for release.
McClain was also working on tracks. It’s unclear how these have gone. I’m told, not so well. Many of them are outtakes from “Invincible,” an album that wasn’t so good in the first place. And no one’s bothered to approach Michael’s engineer, Bruce Swedien, about tracks from “Thriller” or “Bad” he might have in his archives.
There’s truly confusion now in the inner circle about how to proceed. Sony is waiting for delivery but there’s no album art or concept.
As for a cover: I am told McClain commissioned one a la “Sgt. Pepper” with a montage of drawings or caricatures of people in Michael’s life whom he admired. Funny: several lawyers were jammed in among Martin Luther King and Marvin Gaye. McClain’s picture, sources say, was larger than most of the others.
Needless to say, that’s been scrapped.
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Superstar rapper Kanye West has become a master of all media in creating anticipation for his upcoming release, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," unleashing songs free to the Web, conceiving show-stopping television appearances and prepping his first short film. Sometimes, as appears to be the case today, the artist's unpredictability has even caught his label off-guard, as the outspoken artist took to the Web and declared that the artwork for his upcoming album had been rejected for the U.S. market.
The artist has also been regularly baring his soul on Twitter, offering his thoughts on rugs, women's fashions, last year's MTV Video Music Awards fiasco with Taylor Swift, the overuse of the term "LOL" and plenty, plenty, plenty more. On Sunday, the artist utilized Twitter once more, declaring that his desired album cover for "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" was "banned in the USA!!!"
Kanye wrote, "They don't want me chilling on the couch with my phoenix!" and revealed a piece of graphic artwork in which a naked representation of the artist was in a sexually suggestive position with the mythological firebird in female form. In a follow-up tweet, West wrote, "In the '70s album covers had actual nudity... It's so funny that people forget that... Everything has been so commercialized now."
A source familiar with West's discussions with Universal Music Group's Island Def Jam on the cover art agreed to speak solely on the condition of anonymity, proclaiming that he did "not want to lose my job over this." The source seemed to indicate that the debate over the artwork was not one that was cut-and-dry. West was strongly urged to use alternate art, the source conceded, but added that West "was told if he wanted to do it, the label would stand behind him."
At issue, said the high-placed industry source, was whether or not mass-market retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart would carry an album featuring venomous nudes, and one that would no doubt inspire controversy. Though sales at mass merchants have been declining in recent years, data from Nielsen SoundScan for the last two years still had the likes of Best Buy and Wal-Mart accounting for at least 10% or more of physical CD sales.
A potential boycott from a major retailer would no doubt have a massive impact on West's album sales, especially during the holiday season. "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" is currently scheduled for a Nov. 22 release in the U.S. Though retail reps were unavailable for comment on Sunday evening, follow-up tweets from West seemed to indicate that concerns over retail acceptance played some part in his refusal to alter his intended cover.
Wrote West, "In all honesty ... I really don't be thinking about Wal-Mart when I make my music or album covers #Kanyeshrug!"
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Whatever the reactions to Taylor Swift's third full-length album, Speak Now, might be, there are two critics whose responses we can easily pin down in advance.
Taylor Lautner is going to love it.
John Mayer? Not so much.
The hotly anticipated album, which comes out Oct. 25, has been held tightly under wraps until now, with only a handful of songs made available for advance listening even to journalists who have been doing interviews with Swift. Now that her label is finally starting to play the album for select critics, it's easy to fathom why its contents have been closely guarded, all fears of leakage aside. Some of the lyrics are startlingly candid, even by the standards of Taylor "Naming Names, Taking No Prisoners" Swift.
And listening to "Dear John," the scorching song that is-from all appearances-aimed at Mayer, all we can say is: Joe Jonas, you got off easy.
When I talked with Swift last month after hearing a few of the new songs, she didn't hesitate to frame Speak Now as her diary of the last two tumultuous years. The general public might have to guess which relationships or incidents most of the songs are about, but the subjects of the lyrics will quickly recognize themselves, she feels confident.
"They're all made very clear," Swift told me. "Every single song is like a roadmap to what that relationship stood for, with little markers that maybe everyone won't know, but there are things that were little nuances of the relationship, little hints. And every single song is like that. Everyone will know, so I don't really have to send out emails on this one."
But, I said, by necessity of her fame and that of her recent boyfriends, she is past the point of using proper names in the lyrics now.
"Um," she responded, "there's still names that I used. Wait till you hear those."
Actually, there's only one actual name called out anywhere in the 14 songs. So if you were thinking that "Dear John" takes its title strictly from the old expression "a dear John letter," you might want to think again. Swift is nothing if not extremely literal.
With most serious singer-songwriters, it might seem voyeuristic to speculate on the personal situations being reflected upon in song. But Swift has lived her life as a fairly open book, all but inviting her fans to relate her well-known relationships to their own as she evidences a gift for writing in both autobiographical and universal terms.
And it might seem sensationalistic to focus on "Dear John" at the expense of the rest of the album if it didn't feel like it might be her masterpiece to date, or at least the most bracingly, joltingly honest song you've heard any major performer have the nerve to put on record in years. Maybe not since John Lennon took on estranged partner Paul McCartney in "How Do You Sleep" has a major pop singer-songwriter so publicly and unguardedly taken on another in song. But while Lennon's song came off as mean-spirited, Swift was motivated by vulnerability and woundedness, which makes her song far braver... and more cutting.
The first chorus begins: "Dear John/I see it all now that you're gone/Don't you think I was too young/To be messed with/The girl in the dress/Cried the whole way home/I should've known." A second version of the chorus includes the lines: "It was wrong/Don't you think nineteen's too young/To be played/By your dark, twisted games/When I loved you so."
When rumors of a Mayer/Swift romance broke, some of us had a hard time imagining it, because of his rather famously ruinous reputation in matters of love and her ever-present, protective mom. "Dear John" addresses that: "My mother accused me of losing my mind/But I swore I was fine..." And: "You'll add my name to your long list of traitors who don't understand/And I'll look back in regret I ignored what they said/'Run as fast as you can'."
Swift, who turns 21 in December, won't outrightly acknowledge the subjects of these songs-except for "Innocent," the one written to Kanye West-so we have to allow that maybe "Dear John" is about some other much older man her mother warned her about who is known for "all the girls that you run dry," and not the 32-year-old Mayer... Like, the late John Forsythe, maybe? Hmm. Gonna have to stick with our original educated guess on this one.
There may be those who'll accuse Swift of exploiting her own romantic travails in this and other songs. But the extended bridge section of "Dear John" (and, at six and a half minutes, the entire song is fairly extended) packs such a cathartic punch, it really does transcend any tabloid associations. When Swift sings "I'm shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town," anyone who ever felt manipulated or used and found the strength to move on may be cheering like it's the 4th of July.
"Dear John" is the most powerful song on the album, but hardly the only vivid or emotional one. It's not all vituperation, though. The apologetic "Back to December" can't be about anyone but Lautner, and to our ears, so are several of the other new tracks-none of them about revenge, all of them about fondness for the admittedly brief time spent together. While Swift was writing these songs, Lautner's pointy werewolf ears must have been burning nonstop, to the point of spontaneous combustion. He has to be as flattered as Mayer should be flabbergasted.
While you wait for Speak Now's release on Monday, here's a bible on what to expect from the hour-plus album, from first track to last.
MINE
The opening track and first single is already practically a standard, having been rush-released way back on August 4, in response to a leak. Who's it about? Definitely not one of Swift's longer-term steadies, but a shorter-lived crush. (If you had to attach a name to it, it could be Glee actor Cory Monteith, whose are-they-or-aren't-they-dating friendship early in 2010 never seemed to amount to much. Or, it could be about an infatuation so short-lived we never got to hear about it.)
I asked Swift how "Mine" fit with the true confessions theme of the album, since the bits about marriage clearly go beyond the sphere of sheer autobiography.
"It actually is a confession of some sort," she responded, "because this is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like some weird science-fiction movie. After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn't talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day I got an email from him. And I was like"-she claps her hands-" ‘Yes!' Because that one was sort of half-confession, and half-prediction or projection of what I saw. And the fact that it came across so clearly to that guy that he would email me meant that I had been direct enough."
How did the fellow in question take to realizing that their brief flirtation had resulted in an entire fantasy of togetherness, arguing, falling apart, and married reconciliation-ever-after? Swift suddenly became coy. "Um... I don't know. I didn't really respond. But he was sort of like, ‘I had no idea... I realize I've been naïve.'"
SPARKS FLY
"Sparks Fly" is apparently the oldest song on the album, having been performed live-and leaked to the web via a crude concert recording-back in 2008. So hardcore Swift fans are familiar with the bones of this song, if not yet the revised lyrics and arrangement. The chorus is still the same as in the live bootleg that's circulated among fans for a couple of years, but some of the verses have been changed. Among the new lyrics: "My mind forgot to remind me you're a bad idea." Some of the changes make the protagonist of this upbeat song a bit cockier than before. A line that once went "Something that'll haunt me when you're not around" has had a role-reversal switch, so that she now promises to give her b.f. "something that'll haunt you when I'm not around." Apparently she's a little more confident of her charms than she was two years ago.
BACK TO DECEMBER
This song, which was already released on iTunes, doesn't leave many doubts about who it's addressed to, since Swift broke up in Lautner last December. It's been widely noted that it's her first "apology" song. She is, after all, known more as the singer of "Picture to Burn" than for writing songs acknowledging that maybe it's her picture that should've been burned. But she emphasizes that, for her, repentance was no mere lyrical exercise.
"I've always sort of felt like I try to write songs that the people that they're about deserve," she told me. "And up until now I haven't really felt like I really, really needed to apologize to someone and someone deserved that from me. It's just necessary. From knowing the situation and writing honestly, I can't leave that part out, and I don't think I should. And I think that you should be able to say that you're sorry to someone, and sometimes the best way I know how to say anything is in a song... I think that for me, especially playing that song for the first time for people around me, like my family and my friends, they made that point right away-like, ‘You realize you've never done this before. You've never really apologized to someone in a song.' I guess I wasn't conscious of that when I was writing it, because it just was exactly what I needed to say. It wasn't like ‘Oh, I haven't covered this emotion yet.' It was just a new emotion for me to feel."
SPEAK NOW
Also already released on iTunes, the title track is the frothiest song on the album, at least sonically, with Swift trying out an uncharacteristic vocal style that's closer to Feist than her usual, more conversational approach toward singing.
"The song was inspired by the idea of bursting into your ex-boyfriend's wedding and saying ‘Don't do it'-which was originally inspired by one of my friends and the fact that the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl," she explained to me. "And my first inclination was to say, ‘Well, are you gonna speak now?' And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn't be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be...
"When titling an album," she explained last month, "for me the first step is I go down the titles of the songs I have so far, and see any of those titles could be the recurring theme throughout the entire record. At this point I had probably 70% of the songs that ended up being on the album. And I just kept going back to ‘Speak Now,' because I think it's such a metaphor, that moment where it's almost too late, and you've got to either say what it is you are feeling or deal with the consequences forever. And I feel like that's such a metaphor for so many things that we go through in life, where you can either say what you mean or you can be quiet about it forever. And this album seemed like the opportunity for me to speak now or forever hold my peace."
DEAR JOHN
"The girl in the dress wrote you a song..." Yes, she did. (See introduction.)
MEAN
By far the country-est song on the album, not to mention by far the country-est tune she's ever done, with an abundance of mandolin and banjo. It's easy to imagine this becoming a theme song or rallying cry for the growing anti-bullying movement. Verses like "Calling me out when I'm wounded/You, picking on the weaker man" and "You have pointed out my flaws again, as if I don't already see them/I walk with my head down, trying to block you out" leading to a triumphant we-shall-overcome-the-mean-girls-(and-boys) chorus.
Said chorus could count as a case of backwards projection, flashing back to Swift's pre-fame life: "Someday I'll be living in a big old city/And all you're ever gonna be is mean." But there is a definite allusion to recent controversies when, toward the end of the song, she adds: "And I can see you year from now in a bar talking over a football game/With that same big loud opinion, but no one's listening/Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things/Drunk and talking all about how I... can't... sing." Snap!
THE STORY OF US
Early fan speculation, based in preliminary teases about the content of the tune, was that this one was about Joe Jonas. But she wrote about Joe on her last album, in "Forever and Always." Do we think she's going to devote a song to him at this late date any more than the New York Times is going to feature on-the-scene reporting from the Spanish Civil War?
"That was the last song that I wrote on the record," she told me, "because it happened most recently. It was at an awards show, and there had been a falling out between me and this guy, and I think both of us had so much that we wanted to say, but we're sitting six seats away from each other and just fighting this silent war of ‘I don't care that you're here.' I don't care that you're here.' It's so terribly, heartbreakingly awkward."
Obviously, the wound was fresh, so even though Swift did run into Jonas at a couple of awards shows this year, it seems much more likely to place its setting as the People's Choice Awards in January, where Swift and Lautner were reported to have successfully avoided each other, just three weeks after breaking up. Key lyrics: "I'd tell you I miss you but I don't know how/I've never heard silence quite this loud." Also: "I would lay my armor down, if you would say you'd rather love than fight."
NEVER GROW UP
No, this isn't another song about Kanye West. (Good guess, though.) Though this one could also be called "Innocent," it's sung to an actual baby. "Never Grow Up" is a sweet lullabye with an undercurrent of sadness or even wary adult bitterness, as Auntie Taylor advises the infant whose nightlight she's turning on: "To you everything's funny/You've got nothing to regret/I'd give all I could, honey/If you could stay like that."
ENCHANTED
The most unabashedly romantic song on the album, and also one of the best, "Enchanted" describes the aftermath of meeting a special someone without knowing whether the instant infatuation is at all reciprocated.
"That song is about pining away for if you're ever going to see someone again-walking away too early," she explained. "It was about this guy that I met in New York City, and I had talked to him on email or something before, but I had never met him. And meeting him, it was this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you're not in love with somebody. And the whole entire way home, I remember the glittery New York City buildings passing by, and then just sitting there thinking, am I ever going to talk to this person again? And that pining away for a romance that may never even happen, but all you have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will.
"I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back. Because it just was this positive, wistful feeling of: I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you. I hope that you know that meeting you was not something that I took lightly, or just in passing. And I think my favorite part of that song is the part where, in the bridge, it goes to sort of a stream of consciousness of ‘Please don't be in love with someone else/Please don't have somebody waiting on you.' Because at that moment, that's exactly what my thoughts were. And it feels good to write exactly what your thoughts were in a certain moment."
Apparently, nothing came of this enchantment, except for the song. At least that's the impression given by how Swift acknowledges the guy in question hasn't heard it yet, though she expects him to recognize that it's about their brief encounter when he does hear it. "I think so," she said with a slight laugh. "Using the word ‘wonderstruck' was done on purpose," she added (referring to the line "I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home"). Because that's a word which that person used one time in an email. And I don't think I've ever heard anybody use that term before, so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know."
(And now every guy who ever ran into Taylor Swift at a social event in New York is thinking: "I did say 'wonderstruck,' right?")
BETTER THAN REVENGE
A fast-paced rocker in the tradition of vengeance songs like "Picture to Burn," but aimed at a Mean Girl. "She underestimated just who she was stealing from..." Indeed. "I think her ever-present frown is a little troubling/She thinks I'm psycho because I like to rhyme her name with things." Speaking of rhymes, the chorus rhymes "she's an actress" with "better known for the things she does on the mattress." Parting thought: "You might have him, but haven't you heard?/You might have him, but I always get the last word." Oh, we imagine "she" heard, whoever she might be.
INNOCENT
Swift premiered this song about Kanye West at the scene of the crime-the MTV Music Video Awards. "I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him. But for me it was important to write a song to him."
Judging from how flawlessly Swift pulled off her subway performance of "You Belong With Me" shortly after the Kanye incident, it was easy to surmise that she just brushed it off like the preternatural pro she is. But that's hardly the case. "The fans in the subway know exactly what happened that night. It's something I'm never gonna forget. And I'm always going to look back and smile on how they really, really helped me through that.... I'm so emotional and human.
"You have to try really hard to regulate what you feel, what you let in, and what you don't. Because things like criticism, you are told to be very thick-skinned about things like that. But then when it comes to making an album, if you make everything general and kind of gloss over your actual raw feelings, that doesn't benefit anyone... As far as what to feel and what level to feel it, I can't really control any of that. It's just how things hit you, and what you let in is definitely something you've got to find a balance for."
HAUNTED
The most musically dramatic song on the album has effervescent-oops, make that Evanescence-qualities, with strings bumping up against squalling guitars, to underscore the romantic obsession being described. "Something's gone terribly wrong/You're all I wanted," she sings, demanding at one point late in the song: "Finish what you started!"
LAST KISS
A much more tender post-breakup song than the desperate one that precedes it in the lineup. Best lines: "All I know is, I don't how to be something you miss." And: "So I'll watch your life in pictures/Like I used to watch you sleep..." Now, that's haunted.
LONG LIVE
Hard to imagine there's any way the closing number isn't about Lautner, if the ongoing affection she's publicly expressed for him is true (not to mention the remorse heard earlier in the album in "Back to December"). She describes herself and her paramour in heroic terms: "The crowds in the stands went wild/We were the kings and the queens/And they read off our names..." That may strike some listeners as self-important for a celebrity to have written, but later in the song, Swift describes things more in the terms of a homecoming king and queen than Hollywood royalty, saying: "You traded your baseball cap for a crown/And they gave us our trophies/And we held them up for our towns."
Taken at its word, the song would seem to have been written during this moment of mutual triumph, but the conquistador attitude occasionally gives way to bittersweet prophecy, as Swift sings, "If you have children someday, when they point to the pictures, please tell them my name..."
Somehow, we have a feeling the guy's kids aren't going to have a hard time deducing on their own who the blonde girl is. If there was any doubt, Speak Now helps ensure she'll have a spot in the history books and not just a faded teen-pop photo album.
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Taylor Swift accepted her third trophy as the songwriter-artist of the year by the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) at a private gala celebration in Nashville on Sunday night (Oct. 17). Swift was recognized for writing "Fifteen," "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me." Her award was presented early in the evening, prior to the previously-announced induction of Pat Alger, Steve Cropper and the late Paul Davis and Stephen Foster into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Swift did not perform at the event, but the Hall of Fame inductees were later honored with renditions of their most popular songs performed by the likes of Garth Brooks, T. Graham Brown, Tyler Bryant, Jim Lauderdale, Tanya Tucker and Jimmy Wayne.
In addition, Chris DuBois was named songwriter of the year for his contributions to Brad Paisley's "Then" and "Welcome to the Future," as well as Craig Morgan's "This Ain't Nothin'." Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me," written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin, claimed song of the year honors.
After acknowledging a successful year for Douglas, who was seated at the table next to hers, Swift addressed the audience from a podium.
"Since I can remember, my favorite thing in the whole world was a good story -- going back to when my mom and dad would read me stories when I was little, and then discovering poetry in English class," she said. "Then I discovered this town called Nashville, where they tell the coolest stories. In my opinion, they tell them in the most magical ways.
"I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so generous with me. Whether it was telling fairy tales or sad stories or stories that were just about my life and what I was going through, you've been wonderful to me. And I'm having a blast telling stories."
She added, "Right now, my story is that in about 30 minutes, I'm getting on a plane to go to Paris and then London and then Germany and then New York. And then after that, I have seven days and five hours and 22 minutes until my album comes out."
Amid a round of applause, Swift implored, "Please wish me luck because I am a nervous wreck. I can't thank you enough. I can't thank the songwriters enough for inspiring me, the publishers for being so incredibly supportive. [Sony/ATV Music Publishing] has always been wonderful to me. Thank you for standing up and clapping. That was really nice. And I just really appreciate getting to be here with you guys. Thank you so much."
Near the end of the night, Alger's early songwriting career was recalled by producer Allen Reynolds, who detailed Alger's initial success in Nashville by writing Kathy Mattea's "Goin' Gone," Don Williams' "True Love" and Hal Ketchum's "Small Town Saturday Night," which were promptly sung as a medley by Jimmy Wayne. But it might be impossible to salute Alger without Garth Brooks, who divided his time onstage between providing descriptions of their collaborative process and delivering the fruits of their labor -- solo acoustic versions of "Unanswered Prayers," "That Summer" and "The Thunder Rolls."
Brooks noted, "I love this guy, and me and him should not love each other. We're as different as night and day can be. This poor guy has been tormented by me over the last couple of decades. I'll give you an average writing session for us. Pat is sitting with his pen and his paper, poised. I've got a little rubber ball that I'm bouncing off the wall, right above his head. ... I'm crawling underneath the chairs and desks like I'm 5 years old, because that's what I do. Alger's sitting there about ready to kill me, coming up with all these wonderful lines, thousands of them that you never use.
"But that's Alger's thing. Alger understands the craft. That's what I love about Pat Alger. Pat Alger doesn't care how or when it gets done. I'll even go so far as to say, even if it does get done. This is what I've always loved about you, partner. He understands that what it is, is what it is. And if you make it to be something it isn't, it's never going to live and breathe."
Brooks also told the crowd that "The Thunder Rolls" was about to go on a Tanya Tucker album, but her producer didn't think the song was finished. When her project was retooled, Alger and Brooks reclaimed the song -- and wrote a fourth verse, which Brooks only sings in concert. Just before concluding with its performance, Brooks said, "I can't even imagine my career without this song, but even more than that, I can't imagine my career without you, Pat."
During his induction speech, Alger introduced his family, thanked his friends and confirmed that Brooks' ball-bouncing anecdote was absolutely a fact. "I have to tell you, I've worked with a lot of fantastic songwriters, and there's not a finer one I've ever worked with than Garth," he said.
Several of Steve Cropper's soulful songs were resurrected by newcomer Tyler Bryant, who admitted he'd never been so scared to perform. Yet he did a fine job with "In the Midnight Hour," famously recorded by Wilson Pickett, and the instrumental "Green Onions," perhaps the most enduring tune in the catalog of Cropper's band, Booker T and the MG's. Bryant and his ensemble also backed T. Graham Brown, whose gritty take on "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" made the crowd believe every word. Cropper shares the writing credit with the late Otis Redding for that classic, which has been played on the radio more than 6 million times. During his time at the podium, Cropper reminisced about saving up money to buy his first guitar, then told the audience that his always-supportive father was in the crowd, celebrating his 90th birthday.
The late Paul Davis was the subject of a handful of candid stories told by friend and frequent collaborator, Paul Overstreet. After that, fellow songwriters J. Fred Knobloch, Kyle Lehning, Ed Seay, Ronn Price, Anthony Martin and Jennifer Kimball offered a medley of Davis' memorable material, such as "Cool Night," "I Go Crazy," "Ride 'Em Cowboy," "'65 Love Affair," "Bop" and "Sweet Life." Tanya Tucker then stepped out to sing "Love Me Like You Used To," her 1987 country hit co-written by Davis and Buddy Emmons. Davis' son, Jonathan Paul Davis, accepted for his father, who died in 2008.
Songwriting pioneer Stephen Foster joined the Hall of Fame 146 years after his death. His music was remembered by the trio Mockingbird Sun with a medley of "Oh Susanna," "Farewell My Lilly Dear," "Beautiful Dreamer" and "My Old Kentucky Home." In addition, Jim Lauderdale delivered a bare-bones rendition of "Hard Times Come Again No More." Vanderbilt professor of musicology Dale Cockrell accepted the award, calling Foster "the most important composer" and "an American genius." In addition, former BMI executive Frances Preston was personally honored with the Mentor Award, which will now be named for her.
At the beginning of the event, NSAI also recognized "The 10 Songs I Wish I'd Written," chosen by professional songwriters. Due to a tie, 11 hit singles with Nashville roots were honored: Easton Corbin's "A Little More Country Than That" (Rory Lee Feek, Don Poythress, Wynn Varble); Jason Aldean's "Big Green Tractor" (Jim Collins, David Lee Murphy); Lady Antebellum's "I Run to You" (Tom Douglas, Dave Haywood, Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott) and "Need You Now" (Dave Haywood, Josh Kear, Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott); David Nail's "Red Light" (Dennis Matowsky, Melissa Peirce, Jonathan Singleton); Tim McGraw's "Southern Voice" (Bob DiPiero, Tom Douglas); Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" (Jessi Alexander, Jon Mabe); Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" (Tom Douglas, Allen Shamblin); Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" (Caleb Followill, Jared Followill, Matthew Followill, Nathan Followill); Lambert's "White Liar" (Natalie Hemby, Miranda Lambert) and Swift's "You Belong With Me" (Liz Rose, Taylor Swift).
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