Lorde wins NZ’s Silver Scroll Award

The global chart success of Lorde’s Royals has been vindicated by her fellow New Zealand songwriters, as the song took out APRA’s peer-voted Silver Scroll award, decided by 10,000 New Zealand songwriter members of the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA).

It is the 16-year old’s first (non-sales-based) major award. She shared the win with its 30-year old co-writer, former Goodnight Nurse singer Joel Little. He told her onstage at Auckland’s Vecvtor Arena, “It’s taken me 10 years to get up on this stage, and it’s taken you just 10 months. You’re kind of annoying […] the scary part of it is you definitely haven’t written your best song.”

Royals, which debuted at #1 in New Zealand, is holding the top spot in the United States for its third week. Its parent album Heroine is at #3. Royals beat out songs by Anna Coddington, Tattletale Saints, the Phoenix Foundation and Aaradhna.

“Ella and Joel have created a song that has quite rightfully taken the world by storm,” APRA director of New Zealand operations Anthony Healy commented.

“It is testament to the quality of song that it should gain such widespread support, but also be chosen as the best song of the past year by their songwriter peers.”

The Silver Scroll was set up in 1965 to reflect the creativity of a songwriter, rather than sales. Previous winners include Neil Finn, Dave Dobbyn, Ray Columbus, Shona Laing, Don McGlashan, Bic Runga, Chris Knox, Brooke Fraser, and The Naked and Famous.

Dobbyn was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame at the ceremony, to celebrate a 40-year career which began with Th’ Dudes and DD Smash, and a solo career which launched in the mid-1980s. His best known hit is Slice Of Heaven, recorded with The Herbs. He quipped if he had advice for his younger self starting out his career, “he’d probably tell me to feck off or something, and I probably would!”

Among others inducted into the Hall of Fame are Dragon, Shihad, Straitjacket Fits, Ray Columbus and the Invaders, Hello Sailor, Toy Love, and Herbs.