The ARIA Awards are coming up again next week, hoping to banish the memory of last year’s Opera House fiasco by returning to their roots at the recently retitled Allphones Arena.
This morning ARIA sent out an extended list of presenters who will be handing over dangerous pointy statues on the night, and judging by the line-up, they may have learnt their lesson. Aside from the excruciatingly annoying Madden Twins of Good Charlotte fame, the presenters are all Aussie and many of them are music icons themselves. This includes Iva Davies of Icehouse, Katie Noonan and -bless- Delta Goodrem, who you may remember won ten ARIAs at one point in her career. They’re joined by TV personalities who don’t suck/belong to reality TV cooking vehicles, like Adam Hills, James Mathison, Tom & Alex and everyone’s favourite sometimes-alcoholic, Molly Meldrum. We’ll leave Rick-Lee out of that one, and Erin McNaught too, but on the plus side, they’re both nice to look at and they probably won’t say much.
In his insightful article ‘The ARIA Awards: can they be saved?‘, music journalist Jason Treuen made some suggestions on how to fix the brand after the trainwreck that was the Carmen Electra/Jason De Rulo/Bob Katter/Eric Stonehedge ARIAs last year. Notably, this included:
Don’t let the models and B-grade celebs touch the trophies this year. They can just run the red carpet and get trashed at the after-party — the paps can snap ’em there. Instead, let the winners receive awards from people they’re truly inspired by. Or at least their peers. That’s a start.
So the ARIAs may be taking a step in right direction. As long as they don’t award Temper Trap Breakthrough Artist for the third year in a row or let Angus Stone/Jessica Mauboy talk, we may be back on track to a ceremony we can all be proud of. After all, they were responsible for this stunner…
Here’s hoping.
via ARIA Australia.
