U2, George Clooney, Amy Grant among Kennedy Center honorees
WASHINGTON » It’s going to be a “Beautiful Day” for the band U2 and four other artists when they receive this year’s Kennedy Center Honors in December.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that the Irish rock band along with actor George Clooney, singers Gladys Knight and Amy Grant and composer Tania León are being honored this year.
The center generally honors five people annually for influencing American culture through the arts. But bands and other groups sometimes get honors, too. Discofunk band Earth, Wind & Fire was the most recent, in 2019, the year the long-running children’s TV show “Sesame Street” was honored. The Eagles were honored in 2016 and Led Zeppelin in 2012.
Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter said in an interview that her group has “worked really hard to think about ‘Are we including all of the performing arts?’ ” as it hands out its awards. She singled out Grant’s music in particular as a different genre being represented in the honors this year.
This is the 45th year of the honors, which will include a gala performance Dec. 4 in Washington featuring top entertainers. The show will be broadcast on CBS at a later date.
Rutter said she was told U2 frontman Bono was eating and dropped his fork when he was told the band had been selected for the honor. But it took a while for the band to accept because Bono had to get his fellow band members — The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. — to buy in, and they weren’t all in the same place, Rutter said.
U2 has sold 170 million albums and been honored with 22 Grammys. The band’s epic singles include “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”
Clooney, who played wily thief Danny Ocean in “Ocean’s Eleven” and its sequels, won’t need to mastermind any sort of scheme to take home the Kennedy Center award.
The 61-year-old actor-director, has won two Academy Awards — for best supporting actor in “Syriana” and as a producer of best picture winner “Argo” — and starred in such films as “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” “Up In the Air,” “Michael Collins” and “The Descendants.”
Knight, 78, is the only one of this year’s honorees who has been a performer at the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2021 the eighttime Grammy winner sang Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free” to honor the country music singer, who wiped at one eye and blew kisses at her after her performance.
Knight — who, with her backup group The Pips, recorded such soul classics as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Midnight Train to Georgia” — said she never expected to be on the other side of the stage. When she learned the Kennedy Center wanted to honor her, she said, her response was, “What?”
Six-time Grammy winner Grant, 61, has already had a big year. Her daughter Millie, who inspired her 1991 hit “Baby Baby,” gave birth to a daughter, Penelope Willow.
The Christian music star has two other grandchildren through the daughter of her husband, country musician Vince Gill.
Grant said that when she heard from the Kennedy Center she initially thought it was Gill they wanted to honor.
The singer — also known for “Every Heartbeat” and “That’s What Love is For” — has her roots in gospel music but found a larger audience with the release of her 1991 record “Heart in Motion.”
Composer and conductor León has worked with the Kennedy Center a number of times — so, she said, she didn’t think it was “anything spectacular” when she got an email setting up a call. She was stunned into silence when she was told the center wanted to honor her.