Taking note of our distinctive sounds
Amy Shark has added three more ARIAs to her trophy cabinet, in a night where the women of music shone.
“My voice is all that I got,” sings Amy Shark in the chorus of the final track of her debut album, Love Monster. It took a little time and more than a few setbacks, but her belief in that vocal gift has paid off on the biggest stage in Australian music.
With the three accolades she collected at last night’s ARIA Awards, including album of the year, best female artist and best pop release, Shark’s career tally of pointy silver statues stands at six.
These are only the latest achievements to cap a remarkable year for the Gold Coast pop singer and songwriter, whose album debuted atop the national charts in July and was followed by a well-attended national tour and a live recording with MTV Unplugged in Melbourne.
Shark met success late. Years of anonymous toil on the Gold Coast pub circuit under a range of guises — including her legal name, Amy Billings — ended just two years ago when her lovelorn song Adore found a national audience and signalled the turn in fortune for the underdog, including a No 2 ranking on last year’s Triple J Hottest 100 poll.
As heard on Love Monster, her talent is in crafting personal narratives that reflect universal feelings. Case in point: I Said Hi, which was written as a pointed kiss-off to those in the music industry who dismissed her as a younger artist — yet who among us can’t relate to the idea of getting one over our doubters, and offering a smug middle finger when they arrive late to the party?
That single has since been certified double platinum, with combined sales and streams in excess of 140,000 copies, while last month at the ARIA nominations event, M-Phazes and Dann Hume shared the award for producer of the year for their work on I Said Hi.
Evidently, the wide appeal of her confessional style of songwriting — where missteps and regrets are foregrounded, rather than airbrushed from the record — is not confined to her home in Queensland.
With a preference for gentle electronic beats and sparse guitar lines, her sound is ready made for a global audience.
Since 2016, Shark has become one of Australia’s most popular musical exports, with overseas audiences steadily building and the artist herself finding fans and collaborators among American industry mainstays such as Mark Hoppus (Blink 182) and Jack Antonoff (Bleachers).
Although their songwriting styles are notably different, that same notion of global appeal applies to Melbourne rock musician Courtney Barnett, whose career in the public eye is a little more established than Shark’s.
Both women performed at The Star in Sydney last night, and Barnett walked away with best rock album for Tell Me How You Really Feel, which debuted at No 2 on the ARIA charts in May.
Three years earlier, the singer and left-handed guitarist, who has a penchant for distortion pedals, scooped up four awards for her debut album, 2015’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.
As well, Melbourne artist Tash Sultana picked up best blues and roots album for Flow State, which debuted at No 2 on the ARIA charts in September.
Sultana is an accomplished songwriter who was busking on Bourke Street just a few years ago, and her sound — which relies on beats, loops and layers painstakingly crafted by the multi-instrumentalist — has been remarkably attractive to international audiences, with tens of thousands of tickets being sold during extensive tours throughout North America, Europe and Britain.
All three musicians were up for best female artist, with Shark prevailing. Between them, they collected a total of seven ARIA awards this year.
The dominance of Shark, Barnett and Sultana is a powerful indicator of the nation’s appetite for distinctive voices in an era where the sum of our musical expression can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection — geographic borders be damned.
In light of their success, it was fitting that this year’s inductee into the ARIA Hall of Fame was Kasey Chambers.
Aged 42, the country singer, songwriter and guitarist became the youngest woman to join the Hall of Fame since it was founded in 1988. Her peers include the likes of Olivia Newton-John, John Farnham and The Seekers.
While such accolades are usually bestowed upon artists approaching the twilight of their careers, that shoe doesn’t fit Chambers at all: last night she accepted the award for best country album for Campfire, which debuted at No 6 on the ARIA charts in May.
Recorded with the Fireside Disciples — a group that includes Chambers’s father, Bill — the album features sparse arrangements built on acoustic guitars, banjoes and simple percussion, as you might expect to hear played at a campsite.
That statue for Campfire takes her career ARIA tally to 13, while her performance of the 2002 No 1 single Not Pretty Enough — alongside artists such as Missy Higgins and Kate Miller-Heidke — was a reminder of just how commercially and culturally successful Chambers has been for almost two decades.
While the latest Hall of Fame inductee continues to produce vital and resonant work 12 albums into her career, there is an unshakeable sadness that continues to linger following the loss of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, whose extraordinary voice fell silent in July last year.
His posthumous album, Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow), earned Yunupingu awards for best male artist and best independent release last night — in addition to accolades last month for world music album and best cover art — yet there is the strong sense that his death at the age of 46 can only be regarded as one of the great artistic tragedies in the history of not just this nation, but the world.
Djarimirri married traditional songs and chants from northeast Arnhem Land with Western orchestration to stunning effect.
Yunupingu completed it shortly before he died of kidney and liver diseases. In April, it became the first indigenous language album to debut at No 1 on the ARIA charts.
It is a timeless, masterly work that will echo long into the future, yet the sombre realisation that we are all poorer for his absence was underlined when Jessica Mauboy, Adam Briggs and Jasmine Yunupingu performed Wulminda (Dark Clouds), the closing track from his final album.
For all the pop gloss, rock grit and country charm shown by the likes of Shark, Barnett, Sultana and Chambers as they continue to perform for audiences at home and abroad, Yunupingu’s work remains a singular contribution to the canon.
As beautifully depicted by Paul Damien Williams in the documentary film Gurrumul, here was a man born blind whose cultural connection to his home in Arnhem Land was so strong as to shrug at the very notion of the music industry and its insatiable desire for fresh, young faces.
Yet here, too, was a man whose striking musical gifts were heard and recorded, and ultimately performed and admired in some of the world’s great concert halls.
If there is a more remarkable success story in Australian music than his, we have yet to hear it.
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2018 ARIA winners
Album: Amy Shark, Love Monster
Female artist: Amy Shark
Male artist: Gurrumul
Dance release: Pnau, Go Bang
Group: 5 Seconds Of Summer
Breakthrough artist: Ruel
Pop release: Amy Shark, Love Monster
Urban release: Hilltop Hoods, Clark Griswold (with Adrian Eagle)
Independent release: Gurrumul, Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow)
Rock album: Courtney Barnett, Tell Me How You Really Feel
Adult contemporary album: Vance Joy, Nation Of Two
Country album: Kasey Chambers & the Fireside Disciples, Campfire
Hard rock/heavy metal album: Parkway Drive, Reverence
Blues and roots album: Tash Sultana, Flow State
Original soundtrack/musical theatre album: Jimmy Barnes, Working Class Boy:
The Soundtracks
Children’s album: Justine Clarke, The Justine Clarke Show!
Song: 5 Seconds Of Summer, Youngblood
Video: Dean Lewis, Be Alright
Australian live act: 5 Seconds Of Summer
International artist: Camila Cabello
Teacher of the year: Scott Maxwell, Grant High School, Mount Gambier, SA
Cover art: Caiti Baker for Gurrumul, Djarimirri (Child Of The Rainbow)
Engineer: Burke Reid for Courtney Barnett’s Tell Me How You Really Feel
Producer: Dann Hume & M-Phazes for Amy Shark’s I Said Hi
Classical album: Slava Grigoryan, Bach Cello Suites Volume II
Jazz album: Jonathan Zwartz, Animarum
World music album: Gurrumul, Djarimirri (Child Of The Rainbow)
Comedy: Bridie and Wyatt, Tonightly With Tom Ballard
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