Genesis Owusu tops global Vanda and Young songwriting contest with Gold Chains
After dominating the ARIA Awards in November by taking home four trophies, the accolades for this Ghanaian-Australian hip-hop artist continue to pile up.
After dominating the ARIA Awards in November by taking home four trophies including album of the year, the accolades for Ghanaian-Australian hip-hop artist Genesis Owusu continue to pile up.
Last week, his debut Smiling With No Teeth was named winner of the $30,000 Australian Music Prize, a peer-voted award which honours the album as an art form.
On Thursday, the Canberra-based artist was named as the winner of the 2021 Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition for his song Gold Chains.
This latest accolade includes a $50,000 cash prize courtesy of music industry sponsors APRA AMCOS, Alberts and Sony Music Publishing, and will come in handy when he tours the US and Europe in the months ahead.
“It’s wild with all these accolades: we only just celebrated the one-year anniversary of that album, but it feels like we released it last month, just because there’s still so much life and discovery coming out of it,” the artist born Kofi Owusu-Ansah told The Australian.
Gold Chains was among the first songs Genesis Owusu wrote for his 15-track release, alongside co-writers and musicians Andrew Klippel, Kirin J Callinan, Michael Di Francesco and Julian Sudek.
His lyrics were centred on his early experiences of success in the music industry, which can look glamorous to outsiders but is often rooted in hard work and sacrifice, particularly for touring performers.
Built on a funky groove and dense keyboard chords, its titular metaphor describes “something that looks shiny and exciting on the outside really being the chains that can constrict and subdue someone,” he said.
“I was talking about all doubts that come with it: doing all this work for potentially no gain, or doing it and getting things in return that might be damaging – and the paradoxical nature of knowing that, but pursuing it any way.”
Last Thursday night at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, a raucous capacity crowd broke the dance floor during the second song of Owusu’s performance with his Black Dog Band.
BREAKING: The floor of the Enmore Theatre has just collapsed. No injuries reported, the event occured just two songs into tonight's Genesis Owusu gig. pic.twitter.com/14TrjoC0zH
— Honi Soit (@honi_soit) March 3, 2022
“It was a very bittersweet moment because obviously I wanted to do a whole set – but now, in this stream of accolades that I’m getting, it feels like another one: the set was so good, the crowd had to destroy the dance floor in two songs,” he said with a laugh. “It feels kind of legendary.”
Nobody was injured during the freak event, which was caused by the impact of the relentless rain and excessive water inundating the suburb of Newtown.
“The floor of the theatre has been assessed and remediation works have commenced,” the venue owners wrote on Facebook on Friday morning. “We have isolated the section that was affected by water and are further reinforcing the surrounding areas as a further precaution.”
With the floor since fixed, the artist and his band returned to the Sydney venue on Wednesday night to complete the abandoned gig.
The tour concludes this weekend with shows in Brisbane and Melbourne, before Owusu tours the US and Europe through to June.
“I’m grateful for times like these – those little in-between moments where we actually get to sit and look back at what we’ve achieved,” he said. “That’s what I’m doing right now: trying to get into my little Zen mode before we have to fly into the eye of the tornado.”
The $10,000 second prize at the Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition – so named for the iconic Easybeats songwriters, Harry Vanda and the late George Young – went to Jerome Farah for Mikey Might, while May-A won third place and $5,000 for her song Time I Love to Waste.
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