Melody Moko and Keith Urban lead 2021 QMAs wins

Hosted by Aimon Clark and Patience Hodgson, with a sold-out crowd of over 700+ guest, the 2021 Queensland Music Awards (QMAs) presented by QMusic, took place last night in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.

With a total of 30 awards categories, Queensland’s night of nights was a celebration of the artistic and commercial success of the state’s best emerging and established artists and their teams over the last 12 months.

Awards were given in blues/roots, childrens, contemporary classic, country, electric/dance, heavy, indigenous, jazz, pop, rock, schools, folk/singer-songwriter, soul/funk/r’n’b, world, regional, remote, and video categories. Winners of the Annual Billy Thorpe Scholarship and People’s Choice Awards were also announced.

QMusic CEO Angela Samut says, "This year’s QMAs was a true celebration of what has become an incredible local music industry, one that our state can be proud of, both culturally and as a key export industry. With a massive 30 categories, our winners represent the true breadth of talent around our state and no doubt include superstars to follow in the footsteps of our Queensland greats that have gone on to change the music landscape globally."

Keith Urban received one of the biggest honours of the night, winning the ‘Highest Selling Album’ award for The Speed Of Now Part 1, which features the number one singles We Were and One Too Many with pop-singer, Pink. It also contains his new single, Out The Cage with Breland and Nile Rodgers.  

Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and poet, Karl S. Williams took home one-of-three of his nominations in the blues/roots category for God Is A Bomb. While, indie rocker, Jaguar Jonze took home the award for folk/singer songwriter for her track, MURDER.

Melody Moko was crowded queen of country with her win for Like Hank Would. Moko took home the award for ‘New Talent of the Year’ back in January at the Golden Guitar Awards.

On Instagram, the mother-of-three wrote, “we just won a @qldmusicawards ?? is this real life? because two hours ago i had my trackies on and a baby in my boob?!" [sic]

Since 2006 (then known as QSong), the QMAs have spotlighted or unearthed a pantheon of Queensland music greats, including Kate Miller-Heidke, Bernard Fanning, The Grates, Hungry Kids of Hungary, and Emma Louise. They’ve also recognised the chart-topping success of artists like Urban and the Veronicas, and the lifelong contributions of the Bee Gees, Ed Kuepper and Grant McLennan.

See the full list of winners here.

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Image: Supplied