Luke Combs and Hardy Win Prime Songwriting Honors at BMI Nation Awards

Hardy was named songwriter of the yr Tuesday evening on the BMI Nation Awards ceremony in Nashville whereas Luke Combs’ “Without end After All” was tagged because the org’s nation track of the yr.

Writer of the yr honors went to Sony Music Publishing, which represented precisely half of the 50 songs that had been being honored in the course of the night because the previous yr’s most-played hits.

Veteran BMI artist Toby Keith obtained the BMI Icon award and was saluted in the course of the dinner by a number of prime artists or songwriting contemporaries performing his signature songs. Underwood sang Keith’s first No. 1 single, “Ought to Have Been A Cowboy,” Church carried out the rowdy “I Love This Bar” and Dean Dillon and Scotty Emerick, two frequent co-writers of Keith’s, teamed up for “A Little Too Late.”

The ceremony was held as all the time at BMI’s Music Row headquarters, with BMI president-CEO Mike O’Neill and VP of artistic Clay Bradley as hosts.

Hardy, extra formally identified by his full title, Michael Hardy, gained the songwriter of the yr award from the performing rights group by advantage of getting co-penned 5 of BMI’s prime 50 songs. 4 had been for different artists — Dierks Bentley’s “Beers On Me,” Blake Shelton’s “Come Again as a Nation Boy,” Morgan Wallen’s “Sand In My Boots” and Cole Swindell’s “Single Saturday Night time” — and the fifth was one in every of his personal hits as a recording artist, “Give Heaven Some Hell.” It was Hardy’s first win as songwriter of the yr.

The 25 songs that Sony Publishing clocked amongst BMI’s prime 50 included such smashes because the aforementioned “Sand in My Boots” plus Kelsea Ballerini’s “Half of My Hometown,” Elle King and Miranda Lambert’s “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Dwelling),” Kane Brown’s “One Mississippi” and Miranda Lambert’s “If I Was a Cowboy.”

An entire checklist of the highest 50 songs being rewarded by BMI could be discovered right here.