John Prine Among 2020 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winners

Folk and Americana icon John Prine is one of seven 2020 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award honorees. The singer-songwriter and his fellow award winners will be honored by the Recording Academy in April.

The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award "celebrates performers who have made outstanding contributions of artistic significance to the field of recording." Recipients are selected by the Recording Academy's Board of Trustees.

"Our industry is one that prides itself on influence and paying it forward, and each year the Recording Academy has the privilege of honoring a select group of visionaries whose creative contributions have rippled throughout our culture," says Deborah Dugan, president and CEO of the Recording Academy. "Our Special Merit Awards recipients have molded their musical passion into pieces of history that will continue to influence and inspire generations of music creators and music lovers to come."

Prine is the lone 2020 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner from the country / folk / Americana world. His fellow honorees are the rock band Chicago; singer Roberta Flack; soul icon Isaac Hayes; punk rock legend Iggy Pop; hip-hop group Public Enemy; and singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

A folk singer since the early 1970s, Prine is known for penning sharp and poignant lyrics, including in the songs "Sam Stone" and "Angel From Montgomery," among others. In the 1980s, he founded Oh Boy Records, which still operates today. He is a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member.

Prine has battled cancer twice: squamous cell cancer in the late 1990s and lung cancer in the early 2010s. Operations for the former cancer left Prine's voice changed, and he required speech therapy in order to sing again.

Prine's most recent album, 2018's The Tree of Forgiveness, earned critical acclaim and a number of awards nominations. In recent years, he's experienced a career resurgence of sorts thanks to recognition within the Americana music community.

The Recording Academy's 2020 class of Lifetime Achievement Awards winners will be honored on April 18, during an event at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California.

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