Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The Songwriters Hall of Fame, which staged its annual awards ceremony on Thursday night, is an institution and an event unlike any other in the music industry, even though many of its elements are hardly unique and many things about it have barely changed over decades, and possibly since it launched in 1969. Indeed, we say many of the same things about the ceremony in an article very similar to this one every year — it’s a combination of an awards show, a family reunion and a trade event that is invite-only yet features a mind-blowing array of Grammy-level, once-in-a-lifetime performances and tributes, always held at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York’s Times Square.
