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”
