48th Annual BMI Pop Awards See Eagle-Eye Cherry's'Save Tonight' Named Song of the Year.

Entertainment Editors

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--MAY 16, 2000

Shania Twain Defends Songwriter Crown

Three in a Row for EMI Music Publishing

`Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)' Sails Through College

Performing rights organization BMI presented

the 48th edition of its Pop Awards tonight with Eagle-Eye Cherry's "Save Tonight," Shania Twain, and EMI Music Publishing taking top honors. Hosted by Frances W. Preston, President & CEO, and Barbara Cane, Vice President & General Manager, Writer/Publisher Relations, Los Angeles, this salute to the creators of the past year's most performed songs culminated in the announcements of Pop Song, Songwriter and Publisher of the Year. In all, BMI Citations of Achievement were bestowed on the writers and publishers of 75 songs during the black-tie gala, staged at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.

"Save Tonight" was proclaimed BMI Pop Song of the Year for songwriter Eagle-Eye Cherry and publisher Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp; this distinction is given to the song tallying the most feature broadcast performances during the eligibility period. A No.1 single from Cherry's debut Epic album Desireless, "Save Tonight" has already been certified a BMI Million-Air.

Mercury Nashville superstar Shania Twain wears the BMI Pop Songwriter of the Year crown for the second year in a row by placing five songs on the most performed list: "From This Moment On" (2nd award), "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!," "That Don't Impress Me Much," "You're Still The One" (2nd award) and "You've Got A Way." All No.1 hits from her 17-times platinum album Come On Over, Twain co-wrote the award-winning songs with husband/producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange (PRS). Twain and "You're Still The One" were honored at the 1999 Pop ceremony as Songwriter and Song of the Year, a feat repeated at the 1999 BMI Country Awards. The five citations given this evening bring her total of BMI Pop and Country awards to 19.

With 20 songs cited, EMI Music Publishing (through its companies EMI-Blackwood Music, Inc., EMI-Longitude Music, EMI-Virgin Songs, Inc., and Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc.) enjoyed the BMI Pop Publisher of the Year spotlight for the third consecutive year; Chairman & CEO Martin Bandier accepted the crystal statue. The Publisher of the Year honor is given to the publishing concern with the highest percentage of copyright ownership in award songs. EMI has now claimed this title six times since 1989.

Of the 121 songwriters recognized, 17 were multiple winners. Following Twain was Rob Thomas with four awards: three for releases by his band matchbox twenty and one for the colossal hit "Smooth," which he performed with Santana. Brothers Fred Jerkins and Rodney Jerkins placed three songs on the list. Collecting two citations were Craig Bullock, Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, Stan Frazier, Elton John (PRS), David Kahne, Murphy Karges, Mark McGrath, Sarah McLachlan (SOCAN), Joseph Nichol, Rodney Sheppard, Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti. (Thomas and McLachlan shared the 1999 BMI Pop Songwriter crown with Twain and Mariah Carey, each with three songs.)

Publishers picking up four or more awards were Bidnis, Inc.; Ensign Music Corporation; Loon Echo, Inc.; Sony/ATV Songs LLC; Universal Music Publishing Group (Universal-Songs of PolyGram International, Inc., and Songs of Universal, Inc.); Warner/Chappell Music Group (Unichappell Music, Inc., and Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp.); and Zomba Songs, Inc.

The first performing rights organization to introduce a comprehensive system of logging and payment for songs played on college radio stations, BMI marked 11 years of college radio logging by naming "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" as Most Performed Song on College Radio for 1999. Songwriter Dexter Holland and his publishing company Underachiever Music accepted the framed certificate for "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)," which was performed by The Offspring (of which Holland is a member) on Columbia Records.

Seventeen of this year's award songs have won Pop Awards previously. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" - the most performed song in the BMI repertoire with more than 8 million broadcast performances - picked up its 14th Pop Award for writers Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Phil Spector (1965, '69, '80, `89-98). The Holland-Dozier-Holland composition "Baby, I Need Your Loving" took home its tenth citation (1964, '67, `91-94, `96-98) and "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You," written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, collected its fifth citation.

Among this year's honorees, 29 songs have earned the status of BMI Million-Air (accumulating at least one million broadcast performances) for a total of 56 million performances. Based on an average length of three minutes, one million airplays is the equivalent of 50,000 hours or 5.7 years, continuously; Million-Airs on the 1999 list translate into 2.8 million hours or 319 years of airplay.

BMI's Citation of Achievement is given annually in recognition of popularity in the field of popular music, as measured by feature broadcast performances on American radio and television; the 2000 Pop Awards eligibility period ran October 1, 1998 through September 30, 1999.

BMI, founded in 1940, is an American performing rights organization that represents more than 250,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in all genres of music. Through its music performance and reciprocal agreements, it grants businesses and media access to its repertoire of more than 4.5 million musical works from around the world.

Please look for photos of the event on the BMI website at http://bmi.com.