George Strait will be celebrated with a special accolade during this year’s Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony, set for Oct. 26 at Nashville’s Music City Center.
Strait will be honored with the career maker award, recognizing his decades-long impact on the careers of members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. The award honors those outside the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame membership, whose artistic work has helped songwriters earn their dreams of induction into the hall’s coveted membership. Reba McEntire is the only previous recipient of the career maker award, having received it in 2018.
“I’m so honored to be receiving the career maker award from the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame,” Strait said in a statement. “I look forward to being there with some of the most talented hall of fame songwriters I’ve been so lucky to be associated with throughout my career. You folks definitely make the world a better place through your amazing abilities as songwriters and artists. See you there.”
During Strait’s more than four decades in the spotlight, he has recorded 264 songs written or cowritten by 72 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame writers (including 44 songwriters who were not in the hall at the time he first recorded their songs).
“Throughout his phenomenal career as an artist, George Strait has played an integral role in helping more than 40 songwriters achieve induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame,” Rich Hallworth, chair of the organization’s board of directors, said in a statement, “which is why we want to express our gratitude to him on Nashville Songwriting’s Most Legendary Night.”
“Having George Strait record a song of mine, especially so early in my career, felt like nothing less than a stamp of approval from Country music itself,” hall of fame songwriter Gretchen Peters, board vice chair and cowriter of Strait’s “The Chill of an Early Fall” said in a statement. “It said, ‘You belong here; you’ve earned your bona fides.’ George is so deeply rooted in the traditions of country music, so beloved and respected and unassailable in his song choices. Every song he touches becomes, de facto, a George Strait song. To a young songwriter, that meant the world.”
This year’s Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees are Taylor Swift, Bruce Channel, Lyle Lovett, Shawn Camp and Lee Thomas Miller, who will be honored alongside Strait during the October ceremony.
The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame has inducted 254 top songwriters since 1970, among them
Bill Anderson; Bobby Braddock; Garth Brooks; Felice and Boudleaux Bryant; Johnny Cash; Don and Phil Everly; Vince Gill; Amy Grant; Tom T. Hall; Harlan Howard; Alan Jackson; Kris Kristofferson; Loretta Lynn; Bob McDill; Bill Monroe; Willie Nelson; Roy Orbison; Paul Overstreet and Dolly Parton.
