Toby Keith Honored at BMI Awards

During Tuesday’s BMI Awards (November 7), Toby Keith‘s vast songwriting career was honored with the BMI Icon Award.

Carrie Underwood, Eric Church, and his regular bandmates, Dean Dillon and Scotty Emerick, performed songs in honor of Keith, before he accepted the prize.

Keith looked back at his career, saying, “When you get older, and you look back at your cassette tapes or your CD, it’s like everybody that rocked country, R&B, whatever it was, the artists that I had were songwriters,” the 61-year-old said.  “They weren’t artists that covered music.  They were songwriters/artists.  Something in my gut, down in my core, said that’s what I wanted to do.  I didn’t know if I’d make it as an artist; but I knew if I wrote as good as the next guy, that somebody might sing one of my songs.”