Updated on Thursday, July 14: The air date for the 2023 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 65th GRAMMY Awards, has been announced. The 2023 GRAMMYs will air live Sunday, Feb. 5, from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and will broadcast live on the CBS Television Network and stream live and on demand on Paramount+. Nominations for the 2023 GRAMMYs will be announced on Tuesday, Nov. 15.

The 2021 GRAMMYs and 2022 GRAMMYs looked vastly different from past years due to the realities of a pandemic. But the 2023 GRAMMYs will be unique for purely positive reasons.

Today, the Recording Academy announced a brand-new GRAMMY Award category: Songwriter Of The Year, Non-Classical. (This was among many other new category additions, including Best Alternative Music Performance, Best Americana Performance and Best Score Soundtrack For Video Games And Other Interactive Media, as well as other process amendments and updates to the GRAMMY Awards process.)

The 2023 GRAMMY nominations are officially here. See the complete list of nominees across all 91 GRAMMY categories.

"We're so excited to honor these diverse communities of music creators through the newly established awards and amendments, and to continue cultivating an environment that inspires change, progress and collaboration," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. expressed in a statement. "The Academy's top priority is to effectively represent the music people that we serve, and each year, that entails listening to our members and ensuring our rules and guidelines reflect our ever-evolving industry."

Watch Now: Introducing The Songwriters & Composers Wing

Mason's comments speak to the greater winds of change surrounding these developments. But what of the GRAMMY for Songwriter Of The Year specifically?

To help music lovers and the wider music community understand the significance of this momentous development, GRAMMY.com spoke to leaders at the Songwriters & Composers Wing, who worked with Recording Academy executives to develop and launch the Songwriter Of The Year GRAMMY category.

In this informative interview with S&C Wing Managing Director Susan Stewart and Chair Evan Bogart, learn more about the thinking behind the creation of the GRAMMY for Songwriter Of The Year — and how to qualify for this magnificent honor.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

What was the impetus for the institution of the GRAMMY for Songwriter Of The Year? Why was now the perfect time to launch this new category?

Susan Stewart, Managing Director, Songwriters & Composers Wing: With the launch of the Songwriters & Composers Wing, we wanted to show our dedication to true craft writers. It was the perfect time with the launch of the Wing to initiate this. It has a longer history, but it really did help having the Wing to stand behind it.

Evan Bogart, Chair of the Songwriters & Composers Wing: As somebody who's a songwriter first — I joined the [Recording Academy’s] Los Angeles Chapter Board in 2010 or 2011 — there weren't many songwriters, if any, on the Board at that point. There wasn't a lot of representation for songwriters in that regard. I wanted to find a way for songwriters to have a seat at the table and be honored for their contributions to music — and not only their contributions to creating songs, but to the entire musical landscape.

Over the course of the last decade-plus, the role of the songwriter has increased so much in the process of A&R, production, recording, mentorship, and artist development. It became so apparent that we needed a Wing to represent the more than 3,500 songwriters within the Recording Academy membership and the interests specific to songwriting, education, mentorship, advocacy, awards, and recognition.

Via that, we were able to make this dream of having an award that honors the compendium of an artist's yearly output and the impact it has each year on the musical landscape in the way the GRAMMYs have been honoring producers since 1975. I think the time to do that is now, and we have the support from the Wing, Academy and community.

People in the songwriting world have been calling for this award for more than a decade — the last decade that I've been listening. Maybe more than that! We just came to the right moment in time to put the weight of the new Wing behind it and create it.

By which metrics will Academy voting members judge the merits of various songwriters for the award on an annual basis?

Bogart: We're looking for which songwriters have demonstrated, first and foremost, that they're considered a songwriter first by the music community. We want to recognize the professional, hardworking songwriters who do this for a living — who wake up every day and think about how they're going to write songs for other people, and craft songs not only for themselves, but for other artists as well.

This isn't intended to just award an artist or producer with another award. This is focused on honoring the professional songwriters who hit the studio every day and try to craft the next song for somebody.

But that doesn't mean that artists and producers can't win this award. It just means that we're going to have certain thresholds within the award that need to be met in order to prove within your discography that you set out to be a professional songwriter as well.

Stewart: People may have questions about how they enter. What they have to do to enter in the OEP [Online Entry Process] is to have a minimum of five songs in which they're listed as a non-performing, non-producing songwriter or co-writer.

Bogart: On top of that, you can submit up to nine songs each year on behalf of yourself to show what you accomplished that year. You can put forth eight songs; you can put forth seven; you can put as many songs as you want — up to nine — in there. But five songs must demonstrate that you were not an artist nor a producer when you wrote them. For five songs, you have to be a non-performing, non-producing songwriter.

On top of that, you can put up to four more songs [on which] you were a producer and artist as well. Again, that is to make sure we are honoring people that the songwriting community views as songwriters first and foremost. You can be an artist, as long as you're [respectively] a songwriter and artist, not an artist and songwriter.

Stewart: We want people to understand that there are people behind these songs, who create a piece of art from nothing. We want to make sure they're recognized. It's an amazing profession.

The GRAMMY remains the highest honor in music — bar none. Through that lens, why does the GRAMMY for Songwriter Of The Year matter to the music industry and larger music community?

Bogart: The Songwriter Of The Year GRAMMY would be the greatest honor a songwriter could achieve in any year. To be honored by your peers for not just one song that you wrote, or an album that you worked on, but for the meaningful contribution and breadth of diversity of your songwriting across all genres in one given year would be the highest achievement that any songwriter could achieve — period.

Stewart: We're honoring their comprehensive body of songs released during the eligibility year. It just sheds such a light on the talent of those individual writers. It's a lot to be proud of for these esteemed creators.

New Categories For The 2023 GRAMMYs Announced: Songwriter Of The Year, Best Video Game Soundtrack, Best Song For Social Change & More Changes