Here's all the biggest takeaways from the 2021 APRA Music Awards

Here’s all the biggest takeaways from the 2021 APRA Music Awards

Words by Chloe Karis

Tones and I swept the 2021 APRA Music Awards while The Kid LAROI became the youngest winner ever.

The APRA Awards took place last night at the Sydney International Convention Centre, hosted by Julia Zemiro, Ziggy Ramo and Georgia Mooney.

Summary

Tame Impala, Midnight Oil, Tones & I and The Kid LAROI were the biggest winners at the physical return of the APRA Awards in Sydney overnight.
The Kid LAROI now becomes the youngest APRA Award winner in history after taking out Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year.
Other winners include The Rubens, The Teskey Brothers, Morgan Evans and Busby Marou.

Read the latest Industry News here.

It doesn’t come as a surprise after the successful year The Kid LAROI had with his 2020 album F*CK LOVE (Savage) and his single ‘WITHOUT YOU’ that the 17-year old artist won Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year.

This is The Kid LAROI’s first APRA Music nomination and award, making him the youngest winner, he thanked APRA, his team and management and the fans in Australia “I love you very, very much and can’t wait to come back.”

Perhaps another unsurprising winner was Kevin Parker, aka Tame Impala, who won Songwriter of the Year for The Slow Rush, which he wrote, produced, recorded and mixed all the songs on his own.

The win follows on from last year’s 2020 ARIA Awards, where Kevin Parker snagged five awards including Album of the Year, Best Band and Best Engineer.

Producer Mark Ronson presented the award to Kevin via video stream at the event, commenting that his collaborator and occasional DJing partner “really is such a fantastic songwriter. It’s great to see him getting the recognition he deserves tonight, so thank you APRA for having me.”

Last year, Tones and I swept the awards, and again last night she won two awards, taking home Most Performed Australian Work and Most Performed Pop Work for her song ‘Never Seen the Rain’, already having over 300 million Spotify streams.

Rob Hirst, Joel Davison and Bunna Lawrie’s song ‘Gadigal Land’ which was Midnight Oil’s first single in 17 years won one of the biggest awards of the night, Peer-Voted Song of the Year. The song is part of The Makarrata Project, a collaborative effort with Indigenous artists that debuted at number one on the ARIA Albums Chart last year.

Other winners of the night included Youngn Lipz for Most Performed Hip Hop / Rap Work for ‘Misunderstood’; The Rubens, who won Most Performed Alternative Work for ‘Live in Life’; The Teskey Brothers, winning Most Performed R&B/Soul Work for ‘Rain’; Busby Marou, who won Most Performed Blues & Roots Work for ‘Over Drinking Over You’; Morgan Evans, Most Performed Country Work for ‘Diamonds’, and Dean Lewis; Most Performed Australian Work Overseas for his 2018 song ‘Be Alright’.