The 2025 class of the Songwriters Hall of Fame will be inducted on Thursday night, with a group that includes music legends George Clinton and The Doobie Brothers, among others.
"I think that as a composer, nothing means more to you than your art form touching, as my old guitar tutor would say, the lives of a million strangers," said Nile Rodgers, a multi-Grammy award winner and chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Rodgers was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016. There are currently more than 470 members in the organization.
"I've won a bunch of Grammys and of course I love the Grammys, but when I got into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, that was the most important award," he said. "So when you walk into the room where you know that you're doing something that touches people that you will never meet but somehow it impacts their lives in an important way, that's just incredible."
The Doobie Brothers: Tom Johnston, John McFee, Michael McDonald and Patrick Simmons.
Clay Patrick McBride
Rodgers called composing a "solitary" process, saying, "we create something from nothing."
"It's just an idea or it's your, the color of your dress or something like that. We turn this nonfictional event into something that's consumable by strangers," he said.
Rodgers, who started in classical music and has also produced jazz, has collaborated with stars from David Bowie to Madonna. But he admitted he only knew one song would be an instant hit.
"I knew 'We Are Family' was a monster, and I thank God I had creative control and I stopped the record company from putting that out first. Because if they had put that out first, we would have never heard the rest of the album," Rodgers said.
The 2025 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction will be held tonight in New York City. This year's inductees are:
George ClintonAshley GorleyMike Love Tony MacaulayRodney "Darkchild" JerkinsTom Johnston, Michael McDonald and Patrick Simmons of "The Doobie Brothers" Kelsie Hoffman