APRA Awards Reintroduces Category For 2025 Event

The APRA Music Awards will return in 2025 with a returning category and new hosts.

On Thursday (March 13th), APRA reintroduced the International Recognition Award  – “designed to honour songwriter members who predominantly live overseas and have achieved remarkable success, distinct from their performance in Australia” – previously known as the Overseas Recognition Award.

The category has previously been presented at events in LA, London and Nashville, with past winners including Jed Kerzel, Kylie Sackley and Lindsay Rimes.

“Australian artists are having huge success internationally and making their mark on the world stage, but here at home they often get overlooked for airplay on commercial radio or streaming services,” APRA Chair Jenny Morris said on Thursday.

“We hope that this new award goes some way to acknowledging the incredible success of these stellar music creators and highlighting the impact their music is having on this important industry stage.”

This year’s ceremony, to be co-hosted by award-winning music presenter Zan Rowe, hip-hop artist and fellow Double J presenter Hau Lātūkefu, and APRA and ARIA nominated artist Ngaiire at Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday 30th April, will also see The Presets’ Julian Hamilton return as Music Director for the second year.

Hamilton will again curate the live performances for the awards, pairing a range of music collaborators with the five nominated Peer-Voted APRA Song of the Year compositions.

The nominees for all categories will be revealed on Wednesday April 2nd.

2024 Rolling Stone AU/NZ cover star Troye Sivan was the major winner of last year’s awards, being honoured with the peer-voted APRA Song of the Year award for his mammoth hit “Rush,” co-written with Styalz Fuego. “Rush” was the lead single on Sivan’s latest album, Something to Give Each Other.

Dean Lewis took home two awards, Most Performed Australian Work and Most Performed Work, for “How Do I Say Goodbye”, taking the singer-songwriter’s APRA Awards tally to six since his songwriting debut in 2016.

Sivan’s fellow Rolling Stone AU/NZ cover stars The Teskey Brothers, meanwhile, were named Songwriter of the Year by the APRA Board of Writer and Publisher Directors.

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