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SZA’s Triumphant Moment, How the Songwriters Hall Of Fame Award Validated Her Journey

SZA

SZA’s Triumphant Moment, How the Songwriters Hall Of Fame Award Validated Her Journey

SZA has shared how winning the Hal David Starlight Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame has validated her entire career. At the 2024 Induction and Awards Gala, she expressed her gratitude and reflected on her journey.

“As an artist, I’ve been a lot of different people. I’ve been 200 pounds; I’ve been 130 pounds. I’ve been someone who doesn’t dance at all on stage to someone who is dancing and trying their best and I think, ‘Oh man, I struggle with the artist thing,’ but writing was where I felt like a person, and I had value and showed that I was smart. It was beyond ‘Am I pretty? Am I liked?’ and that meant everything to me. It made me feel like a person that was doing something worth something. Basically, receiving this award validates my entire career… Thank you for seeing me,” she said.

The Hal David Starlight Award has been awarded to numerous iconic artists, including John Legend, Ne-Yo, Drake, Lil Nas X, and Post Malone. “This is such an exciting time for songwriters and music. Phenomenal artists like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are pushing the envelope of what success looks like but who could argue that the last two years belong to SZA,” SHOF Chairman Nile Rodgers said. “Incredible songwriting, incredible performances, incredible artistry. She so deserves to be the 2024 recipient of the Hal David Starlight Award!”

In other news, SZA is working on the highly anticipated deluxe version of her album SOS, titled LANA. Despite numerous delays due to leaks, fans can expect updates soon. Stay tuned with Honk Magazine for the latest on SZA.

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Artist Spotlight

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds a new direction through Ghost of Panama

Ghost of Panama

Rearranging a song that carries six decades of cultural weight is a creative challenge, but Ghost of Panama approaches “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with clear purpose. The rock band radically reworks Bob Dylan’s counter-culture hit, reshaping its identity while keeping its rebellious spirit. It’s a tribute to musical heritage and a statement of artistic independence all in one.

This new interpretation is very much shaped by the production, made at Ghost of Panama’s home studio in West London. The setting allows an intimate approach to reinterpreting a familiar song and lets the group engage directly with the material, taking it in a new artistic direction.

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” centers on the tension between conservation and transformation. Ghost of Panama is true to the song’s rebellious spirit without adding to its legacy, and this approach gives the release an adventurous feel, grounded in countercultural energy but driven by a desire to see what the composition can become in a different musical context.

Their version of this 60-year-old classic shows that respecting a song’s history can also mean breaking the rules and finding new ways to express its spirit. Fundamentally, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” presents Ghost of Panama as artists who want to engage with the past without being tied to it. The release’s strongest identity is a familiar heritage reimagined through a singularly forward-looking creative vision.

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Artist Spotlight

“NO MORE” by Amanda Holley connects healing, awakening, and survival

Amanda Holley

“NO MORE carries that kind of emotional weight, and some songs feel like they come from lived experience but reach for something bigger. Amanda Holley blends R&B and soul, turning a lifetime of survival into a vision of healing, awakening, and the determination to move beyond what caused the pain.

“NO MORE is a healing anthem for people who have gone through bad experiences and reached a place of higher awareness, but it’s also an emotionally charged protest. The duality is introspective and outward-looking at the same time, turning personal survival into a broader declaration that some experiences, conditions, or cycles should end.

Holley had a premonition of the song six months before the world went into global shutdown. In the vocal booth, working out melodies with her collaborators, she pictured people in the streets. Those images were hard to imagine at the time, but subsequent events would make them painfully familiar.

“NO MORE is given a particularly contemplative underpinning by the context. The identity of R&B and soul leaves room for emotion. The song’s themes link survival, awakening, resistance, and the need for change. Amanda Holley is an artist using music to process personal endurance and a broader sense of social awakening. It’s got a complicated significance, and its release feels like a glimpse of a moment when personal intuition and public reality collided in an unexpected way.

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Photo Credit: Yulia Shusharina

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