The inaugural 2020 Global APRA Music Awards LA took place February 26 at Clive Davis Theater. Awards were made to LA-based (mostly Australian) songwriters, composers and music publishers achieving artistic excellence and commercial success. 

The only main award that went to a Kiwi was the Overseas Recognition Award to – no surprise here – Joel Little who most recently cemented his status as one of the big names in music production by working with Taylor Swift on her  ‘Lover’ album, which has sold well north of five million copies worldwide.

Apart from his past work with Lorde, Joel has been a key collaborator with Jonas Brothers and Tove Lo. Other notable songwriting credits include Khalid’s Young Dumb & Broke and Imagine Dragons’ Whatever It Takes.

Other LA-based Kiwis were acknowledged as members of The 1,000,000,000 List for accumulating over one billion streams globally for an original song. Pirongia’s  Leroy Clampitt (for Justin Bieber’s Company) and Dann Hume formerly from Feilding (for Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth’s See You Again). Joel Little was a 3x-honouree for Royals, Young Dumb & Broke and Whatever It Takes. And Kimbra closed the evening with a performance of (the former frontman of Men At Work) Colin Hay’s, I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You.