“I Can Pray” Disqualified from 2008 Fan Awards
When the top 10 Singing News Fan Awards Song of the Year nominees were posted, Crossroads executive Mickey Gamble was as surprised as anyone else to see that last year’s Dove Brothers hit song “I Can Pray” didn’t make the list.
Of course, there was a wide variety of opinions as to why this was the case. The more recent Dove Brothers’ hit “I’m Gonna Make It” could have split the votes. Or, everyone could have just assumed it would make the top 10 and nominated other songs, intending to return to “I Can Pray” in a later round. Or, the song’s support could have been an inch wide and a mile deep–i.e, not as many people as expected liked the song, but those who did liked it so much and talked about it so much that they made up for all the rest in buzz.
But it seems everyone overlooked the real reason. Even if more people nominated the song than any other, it appears to have been disqualified on a technicality. Whenever a song actually becomes a hit, it has to be released between April 1 of the preceding year and March 31 of the year in which the nominations take place. “I Can Pray” was sent to radio in January 2007, though it didn’t peak on the charts until spring/summer 2007.
In the future, it might make more sense if the rules were revised to allow songs which released and / or peaked on the charts during the eligibility period to be nominated. But in the end, this story does have a moral: Always read the fine print.
