Songwriters

She was an ambitious, well-connected former Nashville radio station receptionist when the performing rights organization BMI hired her to open a southern regional office in the Tennessee capital in 1958. By the time Frances Williams Preston retired as president and chief executive of BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) in 2004, she had been long known as one of the most successful and influential executives in the music industry and a key figure in Nashville's growth as a major music center.

Watching the warmly nostalgic "Troubadours" is like going to a reunion of old friends. You're so happy to see them again that you are willing to forgive whatever lapses and flaws there are in the experience. The old friends in "Troubadours" are the singer-songwriters who flourished roughly between 1968 and 1975, people like Joni Mitchell, Kris Kristofferson and Bonnie Raitt. It was a time when, says Carole King, "there was a hunger for the intimacy, the personal thing we all did," a moment when, says James Taylor, "the authenticity of telling your own story" mattered a great deal.

In "Platinum Hit," premiering Monday, Bravo takes the formula it perfected with "Project Runway" and "Top Chef" and plugs in a dozen singing songwriters — which is not necessarily to say "singer-songwriters," in the James Taylor sense of the phrase — and whittles them away weekly until only one remains, holding cash and contracts. You will recognize the elements, even to the way that the demerits of the losers are enumerated in groups of three: "Your song was trite, confusing and uninspiring.

The songwriters attending Mary Gauthier's class pulled up a folding chair or found a patch of lawn, to hear her inveigh against the forces that block writers' best effort. "Let's talk about obstacles, the crap we tell ourselves. 'I'm not worthy. I'm fat, I'm gay, I'm old. My mama said I couldn't sing. My fourth-grade teacher said I couldn't write,' " Gauthier said. "Help me out here." A student jumped in: "Someone's already said it better than I could." "You're a privileged white chick.

"It was a very messy situation--and a very unfortunate time," said Burt Bacharach. Looking back on the 10-year hiatus during which he only talked "through attorneys" with Hal David and Dionne Warwick, his hit-making collaborators of the '60s, Bacharach's primary desire was to put the past to rest. "Look, there's no point in going over all the gory details," he said this week, as he and David recalled the estrangement that began in the late '70s. "It's all over now.

Carole King has been named the 2013 recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first woman to receive the distinction given to songwriters for a body of work. The former Brill Building writer co-wrote hits in the 1960s including the Shirelles' “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” the Chiffons' “One Fine Day,” the Drifters' “Up On the Roof” and the Monkees' “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” among dozens of others, before becoming a star in her own right with her 1971 album “Tapestry,” one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.

RECORD OF THE YEAR "Halo" Beyoncé Knowles & Ryan Tedder, producers; Jim Caruana, Mark "Spike" Stent & Ryan Tedder, engineers/mixers "I Gotta Feeling" David Guetta & Frederick Riesterer, producers; will.i.am, Dylan "3-D" Dresdow & Padraic "Padlock" Kerin, engineers/mixers "Use Somebody" Jacquire King & Angelo Petraglia, producers; Jacquire King, engineer/mixer "Poker Face" RedOne, producer; Robert Orton, RedOne & Dave Russell, engineers/mixers "You Belong With Me" Nathan Chapman & Taylor Swift, producers; Chad Carlson & Justin Niebank, engineers/mixers SONG OF THE YEAR "Poker Face" Lady Gaga & RedOne, songwriters (Lady Gaga)

Henry Mancini is one of six composers and songwriters who will speak during the "Reel Music" series beginning next month at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. Mancini, who won an Academy Award for his music in "Victor/Victoria," will attend a screening of the film June 27, at the museum's Sherwood Auditorium. The six-film series, held at 6 Tuesday nights June 6-July 18, is sponsored by the Visual Arts Foundation and Great American First Savings. The series, which will include a reception, a film screening and a question-and-answer session with the composer or songwriter afterward, salutes the 75th anniversary of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)