Something’s Amiss With 2010 APRA Music Award Winners

Last night the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Music Awards were held in Sydney – an event which APRA describes as “Australian songwriting’s premier music event”. The biggest award of the night was the 2010 APRA Song Of The Year which went to The Temper Trap’s Dougy Mandagi and Lorenzo Sillitto for their hugely popular, highly licensable song, “Sweet Disposition”. I have a problem with this.

It’s not that “Sweet Disposition” isn’t a great song – it’s hard not to like the slow-build charm; but it seems like the wrong choice of winner for the 2010 APRA Song Of The Year because it was RELEASED IN 2008. There’s a reason why you feel like that song has been around for ages – it has! It makes me wary of what APRA is all about. What is the criteria for a shortlisted song? There’s nothing on the APRA website that really details this, although it does give brief descriptions of all the categories in the Awards.

Song of the Year Category“Decided by the votes of APRA members. All songs written by an APRA member and released in the preceding financial year are eligible for consideration.”

We’re actually not 100% certain that “Sweet Disposition” was officially released in 2008, but we ARE 100% certain it came out before July 2009, which means it wasn’t even eligible to be shortlisted.

The other big award from last night was the 2010 APRA Songwriter of the Year. The criteria for this award is:

Songwriter of the YearDecided by APRA’s Board of writer and publisher directors rewarding the songwriter who has recorded the most impressive body of work in the previous year.

The winners were Angus Young and Malcolm Young from AC/DC whose most recent album Black Ice hit shelves in October 2008.

Just let that sink in for a little while.

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