By The Big Magazine Staff
Grammy Award winning singer and songwriter, SZA will be honored with the Hal David Starlight Award at the 53rd Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Dinner slated for Thursday, June 13 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City, which recognizes young songwriters.
The Hal David Starlight Award, created in 2004, was named in honor of SHOF Chairman Emeritus Hal David, for his longtime support of young songwriters. Award recipients are gifted young songwriters who are making a significant impact in the music industry with their original songs.
SZA, a Universal Music Publishing Group writer, joins the distinguished company of Post Malone, Lil Nas X, Halsey, Sara Bareilles, Ed Sheeran, Nick Jonas, Nate Ruess, Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds, Taylor Swift, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Ne-Yo, Drake, Benny Blanco, Jason Mraz, John Mayer, Rob Thomas, and John Rzeznik.
“This is such an exciting time for songwriters and music. Phenomenal artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift are pushing the envelope of what success looks like but who could argue that the last 2 years belong to SZA. Incredible songwriting, incredible performances, incredible artistry. She so deserves to be the 2024 recipient of the Hal David Starlight Award!” said SHOF Chairman Nile Rodgers
Born in St. Louis and raised in Maplewood, NJ, genre-defying, and 4x GRAMMY Award winning recording artist SZA released her long-awaited sophomore album SOS (Top Dawg Entertainment/RCA Records) on December 9, 2022, which earned RIAA Gold certification upon release. Instantly and universally met with acclaim, SOS debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remained in the top spot for ten non-consecutive weeks. Amassing over 400 million streams in the US during release week, SOS became SZA’s first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (the second largest streaming week for a female artist and third largest of 2022 among all albums at the time), and dominated worldwide charts with No. 1 debuts in Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, and more.
To this day, SZA continues to set the standard on creativity and songwriting, while shattering records with over 10 billion streams worldwide across all platforms.
Previously announced 2024 inductees for the 53rd Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame include 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). Veteran hitmaker Diane Warren will receive the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award.
Full biographies and a complete list of inductees are available on the Songwriters Hall of Fame website at https://www.songhall.org.
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