Taylor Swift's single, Love Story, was named Song of the Year at the 57th Annual BMI Country Awards in Nashville, on Tuesday, November 10. Photo Credit: BMINovember 11, 2009, (Sawf News) - Taylor Swift's single, Love Story, was named Song of the Year at the 57th annual BMI Country Awards in Nashville, on Tuesday, November 10.
Published by Sony/ATV Tree and Taylor Swift Music, Love Story is Swift's second consecutive BMI Song of the Year; Teardrops on My Guitar earned the prestigious honor in 2008.
The event honored Kris Kristofferson as a BMI Icon; named Bobby Pinson Songwriter of the Year, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing Publisher of the Year; and saluted Brooks & Dunn with the BMI President's Award.
Love Story, composed exclusively by Swift, was the first single from her sophomore album Fearless. In addition to topping the Billboard country chart, Love Story topped the Billboard pop and AC charts and became the best-selling country song in the United States and the most-downloaded country single in U. S. history.
A tribute to Kris Kristofferson featured performances by Patty Griffin, Vince Gill, and Willie Nelson.
"There's no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson," Nelson said. "Everything he writes is a standard and we're all just going to have to live with that."
Kristofferson admitted to being overwhelmed by the attention.
"You want the honest truth?" Kristofferson asked with a wry smile. "I'm very honoured, but I'm really uncomfortable with everybody saying something praiseworthy and I feel stupid. I told Willie this is going to be really hard on me. He said, 'That's why I'm going to like it so much, because you're going to hate it.' But I'm awfully grateful that what I love to do means enough to other people that I'm able to do it."
Kristofferson has received 48 BMI Country and Pop Awards for his compositions including "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," "Why Me," "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)," "Me and Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," which garnered seven BMI Country and four BMI Pop Awards, and "For the Good Times," which won a BMI Country Award each consecutive year between 1971 and 1979 as well as five BMI Pop Awards between 1970 and 1974.
With four songs among the year's most-performed, Bobby Pinson earned the Songwriter of the Year crown. In addition to co-writing Sugarland's chart-toppers "All I Want to Do" and "Already Gone," Pinson co-composed Toby Keith's poignant "She Never Cried in Front of Me," and Josh Gracin's nostalgic "We Weren't Crazy." The win marks the first Songwriter of the Year crown for Pinson, who has unquestionably become one of Nashville's most in-demand collaborators.
BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) is an American performing rights organization that represents more than 400,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in all genres of music.
News Copyright © Sawf News. May not be reproduced without explicit written permission