Annie Lennox, Tom Morello, Desmond Child & More Honored at 2026 SONA Awards:’The Songwriter Prom’
Billboard ·
Several speakers addressed AI, "the elephant in the room."
Annie Lennox , Tom Morello and Desmond Child were among the honorees at the 2026 SONA Awards, which were held on Thursday (Oct. 29) at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by Bonnie McKee and Shane Stevens (the latter, a SONA board member).
Laurent Hubert , CEO of Kobalt Music received the executive of the year award. The small army of songwriters who wrote songs for KPop Demon Hunters received the Global Impact Award, which was accepted by Daniel Rojas, Danny Chung, Melanie Fontana and Lindgren. Chris Redding won the 2026 Emerging Songwriter Award presented by YouTube.
Michelle Lewis , CEO of SONA and the SONA Foundation, welcomed the audience to the organization’s sixth awards event. “Welcome to the most songwriterly night of the year … the songwriter prom.”
Music played a welcome part of the event. Three songs that were No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 were performed: McKee and Stevens sang Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton ’s “Islands in the Stream” (written by Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb ) as a tribute to the beloved Parton, who died in August. The hosts also joined Lennox to sing Eurythmics ’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” (written by Lennox and her Eurythmics partner David A. Stewart ) to cap the presentation to Lennox. Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles sang that group’s “Eternal Flame” (which she co-wrote with Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg) over the In Memoriam segment, which included Steinberg, who died in February. In addition, Child protégé Leo Dante sang Aerosmith ’s 1990 top 10 Hot 100 hit “What It Takes” (which Child co-wrote with Joe Perry and Steven Tyler ) as part of the tribute to Child.
SONA, which stands for Songwriters of North America, is a membership-based advocacy organization formed in 2015. The SONA Awards were formerly known as the SONA Warrior Awards. The word “Warrior” remains in the name of two of their awards. Here are highlights from the acceptance speeches of the award recipients at the 2026 SONA Awards.