Tiggy Heart Eckersley Is The ‘Star Of The Show’ For BTN

10-year-old Tiggy Heart Eckersley was the ‘star of the show’ when a piece of her being the youngest ever winner of a Golden Guitar Award was broadcast in schools.

In January, Tiggy took out ‘Song of the Year’ for co-writing Star Of The Show alongside her parents Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley and Dan Biederman. She also joined her parents on stage for a performance of the award-winning song for the captivated audience.

In the three-minute Behind the News piece for ABC Australia, Tiggy shows off her award, introduces her musical parents and shares home footage of her performing at the Golden Guitar Awards as well as from a young age.

“Here it is,” Tiggy says, holding her award proudly. “It says Star of the Show on it, written big in the middle, and it has my name on it here. And it's pretty heavy actually.” 

From there, she shares her musical and songwriting journey.

“I first got into song writing and music when I was really little,” she continued. “I remember that my mum and dad got a piano, and I started playing it and I realised I loved it.”

“Having musicians as parents was very fun and exciting. I love going touring and sitting backstage when they were playing and watching them play music, because we always had music in our house.

"I went to school, and I thought every house played music and I asked my friends, ‘what instrument do you play?’ or ‘what instrument do your parents play?’ And I realised that they don't play an instrument, that's when I realised how lucky I am to have music in my life.”

Tiggy also shares the creation of Star Of The Show.

Tiggy says, “I just sat down, and I started making up just piano and then I realised that I can do this sound, which is Star of the Show riff. That sounded really good, and I just kept playing it for so long, and then my mum and dad picked it up.”

Eckersley adds, “We loved it. We were going ‘wow, this is awesome...’”

“Can we steal it?” McClymont laughs. “But I also said, ‘we'll put you on the song, darling. Do you mind if we write a song about you in this? If we can use it, you'll get paid.’”

“It felt amazing to win. Especially the youngest ever winner,” Tiggy concludes.

“I love playing country music to just get my feelings out and so then I'm never bored. I don't really have any songs that I'm writing at the moment, but I really hope one comes to the me soon because I want to be the queen of rock.” 

Behind the News (more commonly known as BTN) is an educational news program aimed at 10–13-year-old kids. Since 1968, it has unpacked and explained news and current affairs to young people in a dynamic and creative way. 

You can watch Tiggy’s Behind The News piece here.