2020 APRA Music Awards moves to online event in May

The 2020 APRA Music Awards will become a virtual event to be held on May 26.

Australian pop singer-songwriter Tones and I – aka Toni Watson – has four nominations at the 2020 Virtual APRA Music Awards, including song of the year, most performed pop work, breakthrough songwriter of the year and most performed Australian work.

At a time when the live performance side of the Australian music industry has been put on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual celebration of excellence in songwriting has found a way to keep the show going by moving to an online event.

The 38th iteration of the APRA Music Awards will be held on the evening of Tuesday, May 26, with musical direction by singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke.

While Australian artists and songwriters will miss the yearly opportunity to gather in the same room and celebrate the best songwriting in rock, pop, dance, country, blues & roots, alternative and urban music, at least they’ll still have a chance to gather around their screens and devices to cheer their peers in an uncertain moment where wins can be hard to find.

“If ever there was a time to acknowledge the work of songwriters — both those on stage and those who work quietly behind-the-scenes — it is now, which is why we have committed to the 2020 Virtual APRA Music Awards. Our songwriters give us so much: they contribute enormously to our economic and cultural wealth, and in a world of self-isolation, never has the comfort, poignancy, or uplift of a song been more important,” said Dean Ormston, chief executive of Austral­asian music rights manage­ment organisation APRA AMCOS.

Guy Sebastian, nominated for song of the year, performing at Fire Fight Australia.

Contenders for the peer-voted song of the year award include global pop sensation Tones and I with her song Dance Monkey, as well as Guy Sebastian (with his song Choir), Thelma Plum (Better in Blak), The Teskey Brothers (I Get Up) and 5 Seconds of Summer (Teeth).

Tones and I has four nominations in total, including most performed pop work, breakthrough songwriter of the year and most performed Australian work.

For the latter category, the artist born Toni Watson is surely a shoe-in: no other song by an Australian artist topped the charts in more than 30 countries, as Dance Monkey has.

In the breakthrough songwriter category, Watson is up against Thelma Plum, Ruel, The Teskey Brothers and hip-hop artist Sampa Tembo, who performs as Sampa the Great.

At last year’s event at Melbourne Town Hall, song of the year went to Gold Coast singer-songwriter Amy Shark for I Said Hi, while Grammy-nominated artist Sarah Aarons was named songwriter of the year.