‘Empress of Soul’ Gladys Knight among 2022 Kennedy Center honorees

Gladys Knight is taking the midnight train to Washington, D.C., for this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

On Thursday, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that it would honor Knight this year, alongside actor George Clooney, the band U2, singer Amy Grant and composer Tania León.

The 45th annual celebration of the performing arts will include a gala performance on Dec. 4 that will be broadcast later on CBS.

Born and raised in Atlanta, Knight’s music career spans more than 50 years, rising from church choir to Grammy acclaim. She is the only honoree this year to have previously performed at the Kennedy Center Honors. According to the Associated Press, the soul singer sang Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free” last year, “to honor the country music star, who wiped one eye and blew kisses at her after her performance.”

Amongst Knight’s best-known hits are “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “If I Were Your Woman” and “Midnight Train to Georgia.” She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Mariah Carey in 1996.

“I’m humbled beyond words to be included amongst this prestigious group of individuals, both past and present. You could never have told me as a young girl starting my career that I would be honored on a stage such as this, with artists and humanitarians such as these — it just wouldn’t have seemed possible. It would have been the dream of all dreams. I have been blessed with so much in my life and this certainly stands with those achievements at the top of that list,” Knight said, according to the Center’s website.