Jeffrey Steele to receive BMI Icon Award at Country Awards in Nashville

Songwriter Jeffrey Steele will receive the BMI Icon Award at the 74th annual BMI Country Awards on 17 November at BMI's Nashville office.

BMI, the organisation that tracks where songs are played in public and passes royalties back to writers and publishers, announced the honour on 7 October. The evening will be hosted by Mike O'Neill, Mike Steinberg and Clay Bradley, Billboard reported.

Steele has been affiliated with BMI since 1981. That is 45 years with the same rights society. For a songwriter, that society is the pipeline that turns radio plays, live performances and bar jukeboxes into income.

The totals behind the choice are substantial. Steele is a two-time winner of BMI's country songwriter of the year title. He has earned more than 34 BMI country and pop awards. Those prizes go to the writers of the most performed songs, rather than to the singers who record them.

He is also a seven-time Grammy nominee. A nomination means recognition by voters of the US Recording Academy, the body behind the Grammy Awards. He entered the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013. The Hall honours writers whose songs have shaped music made in Nashville, and election is a clear mark of peer respect.

What makes this stand out is staying power. Steele was already BMI's country songwriter of the year in 2003. That was the year "Landslide", written by Stevie Nicks, was named song of the year at the BMI Country Awards, according to BMI. More than two decades later, he returns to the same ceremony for its Icon prize.

For fans, this means a rare spotlight on the name behind the microphone. Singers take the applause. Songwriters take the ceremony before it.

The BMI Country Awards have run for decades. The 54th edition was set for 4 November 2006. The 74th edition takes place on 17 November in Nashville, with Steele confirmed as this year's Icon honouree by BMI.