This Saturday Variety celebrated influential music stars at a brunch in West Hollywood. Variety executive music editor Shirley Halperin honored a number of hitmakers at the Sunset Tower Hotel in honor of the annual Hitmakers issue. Honorees at the gathering included Bebe Rexha, Dua Lipa, and Offset of Migos. Rexha was honored with Songwriter of the Year and Lipa awarded Breakthrough Artist of the Year.
Halperin addressed the crowd ahead of the awards:
“Who are the 80 people who contributed, in no small part, the soundtrack of 2018?, ” Halperin asked.
“Thirty-nine of them, or nearly half, are people of color. One out of five are women… Some are as young as 24 … and others who had their first hits back in 1988. Excluding samples, the average number of writers per hit is 5.4. The largest number of writers on a number one hit? 16. Only one song has 100% of the songwriting credited to one person, and that’s Bazzi for ‘Mine.’ More than 70% have a foundation in hip hop music. Eight of the top 30 tracks are by Post Malone and Drake, and both are affiliated with Republic Records, which is our label of the year.”
Kevin ‘Coach K’ Lee and Pierre ‘Pee’ Thomas (Quality Control) were honored as the year’s top innovators.
