March 28, 2006

News, Country

‘Desperately’ Seeking Million-Air

BMI songwriters Bruce Robison and Monte Warden were the guests of honor at a celebratory dinner honoring one million performances of their George Strait hit, "Desperately." Published by Moonkiss Music, the #1 song was included on Strait's 2003 release, Honkytonkville.

Pictured after the dinner are BMI's Mark Mason, Moonkiss Music's Brandi Warden (and Monte Warden's wife), "Desperately" co-writer Monte Warden, country artist Kelly Willis, "Desperately" co-writer Bruce Robison and BMI's Paul Corbin.

The "Million-Air" celebration was held at Eddie V's restaurant in Austin during the recent SXSW Music Conference. Based on an average song length of three minutes, one million spins is equivalent to 50,000 hours or 5.7 years of continuous airplay.

Among Robison's other songwriting credits are cuts by Lee Ann Womack, Gary Allan, his wife Kelly Willis, and the #1 singles "Angry All The Time" by Tim McGraw and "Travelin' Soldier" by the Dixie Chicks.

Warden won his first Austin Music Award for Best New Band at the age of 15 with his trio Whoa Trigger! After that, Warden played with the Wagoneers, who landed a major label deal with A&M at the first ever SXSW conference in 1986. His solo projects include his self-titled debut in 1993, 1995's Here I Am and Another Try in 1998.

In this story: Gary Allan, Dixie Chicks, Tim McGraw, Bruce Robison, Travelin' Soldier, Monte Warden

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BMI represents more than 400,000 songwriters, composers, and publishers with more than 6.5 million works.