Names and faces
■ After a two-year pandemic delay, Mariah Carey was finally inducted Thursday into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, but not before challenging her new fellow members to do better by women. “I read that out of the 439 total inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, only 32 have been women, until now,” she said at the end of a four-hour celebration in New York. Carey was the headliner, following the inductions of producer duo the Neptunes, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo; British electro-pop band Eurythmics; bluesman Steve Miller; and the Isley Brothers. Songwriters are eligible for induction after writing hit songs for at least 20 years. New annual slates are voted on by the membership. Questlove introduced Carey and regretted that all too often her songwriting chops were overlooked. With 19 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, she is only behind the Beatles. Questlove reminded the crowd that she did it as a Black woman. “Success at this level, especially for Black artists, is a real obstacle course,” he said. Carey said a dysfunctional background prompted a dark vision of the world as a 6-year-old, so music and melodies and lyrics were her escape. She said she always has to remind people she’s a songwriter first, but the diva label seems to stick more. She left the crowd revved up for a performance but other artists came onstage to sing a medley of her songs, including “Fantasy,” “Hero,” “Make It Happen” and “We Belong Together.”
■ Pop star Lizzo has rerecorded a song, stripping an offending lyric that she learned was ableist. “It’s been brought to my attention that there is a harmful word in my new song ‘GRRRLS,’” she said Monday on Twitter. “Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language.” The song contained the line, “Hold my bag/ Do you see this s—-?/ I’m a sp-z/ I’m about to knock somebody out/ Yo, where my best friend?/ She the only one I know to talk me off the deep end.” Disability advocates immediately lashed out on Twitter, informing her that the word “sp-z” is a slur, given that it’s actually a derogatory term for spasticity, a legitimate diagnosis accompanying painful conditions. A number of tweets aimed at the singer got through. She apologized and reworked the offending line so that “I’m a sp-z” has now been changed to “Hold me back,” according to The Guardian. “As a fat black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me, so I overstand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case, unintentionally),” Lizzo wrote. “I’m proud to say there’s a new version of GRRLS with a lyric change. … As an influential artist I’m dedicated to being part of the change I’ve been waiting to see in the world.”