The Australian Music Prize

The Australian Music Vault congratulates Genesis Owusu, winner of the 17th SoundMerch AMP for their acclaimed record Smiling With No Teeth.

“This means a lot. This is an award with a lot of esteem, not to mention putting real money back into music at a time like this is so crucial. I'm super grateful, and I'm keen to use this prize to help spread my art across the world, shouting out Australian talent on the way.” – Genesis Owusu

We take a look back at the impact the award has had on surfacing and celebrating great new Australian music.

The SoundMerch Australian Music Prize (The AMP) is a music award unlike any other. Established in 2005 by Scott B. Murphy, the prize was founded with the simple goal “to discover, reward and promote new Australian music of excellence”, and has gone on to become one of the country’s most coveted Album of the Year awards. Over the years, the prize has been presented to some of Australia’s best emerging and established artists including Sampa The Great, REMI, A.B. Original, Gurrumul, Courtney Barnett, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Augie March, The Mess Hall, Hermitude and The Drones among others.

Entry to The AMP is open to any commercially available Australian album released the previous year regardless of record sales, genre, public recognition or record label affiliation. Any band or artist can submit their album to be in the running for the cash prize of $30,000 which is then assessed by an expert panel of hand-picked judges – made up of volunteers – from all corners of the music industry, including established musicians, music retailers, journalists, and label owners. Previous and current judges include Alice Ivy, music journalist and radio host Sosefina Fuamoli, Northside Records’ owner Chris Gill, Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson and AMP Chairman and Hoodoo Gurus frontman, Dave Faulkner. This year the prize welcomes its first international guest judge, the acclaimed English singer-songwriter and activist, Billy Bragg.

The AMP is such a wonderful reflection of the calibre of music that was released in one year and I truly love that it’s judged on the music itself and the album as a whole, no matter who you are or who you are ‘represented by’.

With its hefty cash prize, The AMP truly has the power to transform careers. Inaugural winners The Drones won the prize for their sophomore album Wait Long By The River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By, which reflects the trials and tribulations of the band’s suburban lives in Western Australia. They put it into context at the time.

"We’ve done over 100 shows in the last four months and we have some nasty debts. We have another world tour starting in May. That’s after we do two tours of Australia. We can’t get jobs because we tour so much. Food is a luxury item right now. We burn through money so it’s safe to say that the 25G’s will not go to waste." – Gareth Liddiard, The Drones in FasterLouder (2006)

The AMP’s initial years saw success for other rock-influenced bands including Augie March who took out the prize with their 2006 record Moo, You Bloody Choir, however, a notable shift occurred in 2010, when Lisa Mitchell became the first woman and solo artist to win the prize for her debut album Wonder. Written collaboratively with fellow Australian musicians Ben Lee, Kevin Mitchell (Bob Evans), Clare Bowditch and Katy Steele, and recorded by Evermore’s Dann Hume, this album exemplified the undeniable talent in the Australian music industry at the time.

With the turn of the decade, wins by debut records including Cloud Control’s Bliss Release and The Jezabels’ Prisoner demonstrated The AMP’s desire to celebrate the independent alt-pop bands that emerged. Dramatically creative with effortless harmonising from Cloud Control’s Alister Wright and Heidi Lenffer and The Jezabels’ Hayley Mary and Heather Shannon, these albums were poignant reminders of the magic of creating an album without the support of large labels and big budgets.

While previous winners used it as a launch-pad for their careers, lo-fi indie-rock duo Big Scary’s 2014 win for their second album, Not Art, came at a pivotal time in their more established career, pushing them further than they ever thought they could go. The album was a major leap forward for Tom Iansek and Jo Symes, who had approached the album without any clear artistic intention other than honing their skills as musicians and songwriters. Mixed by Grammy Award winner Tom Elmhirst (The Black Keys), the prize gave them the financial security and confidence to independently produce their following albums Animal (2016) and Daisy (2021).

Winning The AMP is one of our greatest accomplishments, and a career-defining moment as an artist. It helped cement my own belief in myself as a producer when I really needed it.

The AMP again proved to be a pivotal catalyst in the life of an artist when Zambian-born, Botswana-raised Sampa Tembo – aka Sampa The Great – made history by becoming the first artist (and only, so far) to win the award twice.

In 2018, her debut album, Birds and the BEE9, became the first hip hop record to win the award, signalling a major cultural shift for The AMP. Widely regarded as a mixtape, Birds and the BEE9 shook up the Australian hip hop community. Moving between fiery poetry backed by soul-inspired instrumentals in ‘Flowers’ to pop and R&B inspired tracks like ‘Black Girl Magik’ and ‘Inner Voice’, this dense album drew influences from Lauryn Hill and Nina Simone while expressing Sampa’s deeply personal reflections on life.

In 2020 she was awarded the prize once again for her sophomore album The Return. The album opens with the anthemic ‘Mwana’, a collaboration with her sister Mwanje Tembo and mother Theresa Mutale Tembo, which acts as a precursor for the story that unfolds and demonstrates a noticeable shift in production and instrumentation from her debut release. Not written with commercial appeal in mind, the album tells stories of Sampa’s community including feelings of homesickness and discontent, and weaves hip hop, experimental R&B and jazz with musical references drawn from African heritage. Since winning The AMP, Sampa has toured the world and appeared at festivals from Golden Plains to Coachella, with the award playing an undeniable part in her unstoppable journey.

"I still remember my name being called as the winner of the Australian Music Prize. It was such a shock, especially considering BEE9 was my first full project. It meant the world to me to know I was being recognised and celebrated by my peers. I got to take home a cash prize that ultimately contributed to the next phase of my musical journey through the album The Return. The Return allowed me to fully communicate the story of who I am and where I’m from. This album then landed my second AMP award, which allowed me to tour and share the music that was previously made. I will always be grateful for being awarded the Australian Music Prize." – Sampa the Great

The AMP has also championed First Nations artists with 2017 winners A.B. Original becoming the first Indigenous act to win the prize with their ground-breaking album, Reclaim Australia. This was followed by the posthumous awarding of the prize to Yolngu musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu for Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow) in 2019. Gurrumul’s voice, as showcased on this visceral, immersive recording echoing sounds of his land, helped redefine what an album could achieve. His fusion of traditional Yolngu songs with ethereal orchestral arrangements from the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra changed the way we think about music and culture.

As Gurrumul proves, albums are more than just a collection of singles, they are a statement, a message, a story that adds an artist’s voice to our nation’s cultural fabric and this is something that Gurrumul and indeed all of our finalists have achieved.

In 2021, as the music industry continued to struggle with rolling COVID-19-related lockdowns and show cancellations, electronic duo The Avalanches took out the win for their multilayered psychedelic third album, We Will Always Love You. The album is bookmarked by a disjointed voicemail from a past relationship, and dispersed sounds of a space-age-like interstellar transmission, closing an epic 25-song journey of infectious hooks and guest appearances from MGMT, Karen O, Denzel Curry and Sampa The Great, just to name a few. The win reminded audiences that during this time where countless gigs and tours had been cancelled, Australian artists were still working, collaborating and releasing great music.

We were so honoured and surprised to win the prestigious AMP award this year. We looked at each other quite shocked when our name was read out. It really means a lot to be named the winners in a field of so many other great albums. The cash prize came at the perfect time, it helped keep us afloat over the COVID-19 lockdown and was exactly the support we needed.

This year’s judges have listened to over 400 albums and have wrestled them down to an impressive shortlist of nine finalists including established artists such as Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and Hiatus Kaiyote, alongside emerging acts Amyl and The Sniffers, Baker Boy, Genesis Owusu, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Martha Marlow and Odette.

It's so important to have initiatives like this, that really strive to validate and strengthen creativity over everything else.

With support from major sponsor SoundMerch and supporting partners EMI, Virgin and Island Records, The SoundMerch AMP continues its commitment to celebrating, supporting and energising excellence in Australian music through its public promotion of its long and short-lists right up to the nail-biting meeting of judges on the morning of the ceremony on 3 March 2022 when the final decision is made.

Find out more about The Australian Music Prize and see the full list of past winners here.

Keen to hear more from past Australian Music Prize winners? Check out our Spotify playlist.