Garth Brooks Honors Victoria Shaw at Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame induction

Garth Brooks celebrated longtime friend and co-writer Victoria Shaw's induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame with a montage of songs they wrote together.

He played an acoustic montage of three songs—"A Friend to Me," "She's Every Woman," and "The River."

Brooks said one of their biggest fights was over using the word vessel in "The River." He said he was still thinking about what word they could have used instead.

"There's nothing else it could have been," he laughed. "I'm going to sail my bo-at? I'm going to sail my raf-ft? My big ole ship? I don't know. This kind of worked out OK."

In addition, Shaw's hit songs include John Michael Montgomery's "I Love the Way You Love Me," Doug Stone's "Too Busy Being in Love," Tanya Tucker's "We Don't Have To Do This," and Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera's "Nobody Wants To Be Lonely." She won the Academy of Country Music Award for Song of the Year in 1993, a CMA Triple Play Award, and multiple Daytime Emmy Awards.

Pertaining to the NSHOF, Brooks told Shaw, "This place is better with you in it."

The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (NaSHOF) welcomed six new members as the Class of 2024 at its 54th Anniversary Gala in a ballroom at the top of Nashville's Music City Center. NaSHOF inducted Al Anderson and Liz Rose into the songwriter category, Dan Penn and Victoria Shaw into the veteran songwriter category, David Bellamy in the veteran songwriter/artist category, and the late Tony Joe White into the Hall's Legacy category.

"To all the inductees tonight, it is an honor to be honored next to you," Shaw said. "I admire all of you. And Liz, it's extra special that there are two women being inducted this time. Some day, we won't have to point that out."