Here Are The Winners Of Triple J’s 2019 ‘J Awards’
The Australian Album of the Year was a slight surprise.
Each year, triple j dolls out the J Awards at the end of Ausmusic month, celebrating the year’s best and brightest sonic contributions. And the 2019 winners are in, with Matt Corby taking out the top honour of Australian Album of the Year for sophomore album Rainbow Valley.
Meanwhile, Double J and Unearthed respectively awarded Sampa The Great and Tones And I as their Artists of the Year. Tones’ win is far from a surprise, given she’s gone from an unknown and unsigned artist to a global chart-topper and ARIA-record breaker in less than a year, with ‘Dance Monkey’ holding the #1 spot for an unparalleled 16 weeks.
As for the Music Video of the Year, Sampa took out another trophy for ‘Final Form’, directed by Sanjay De Silva and filmed while Sampa visited her home country of Zambia — a process incredibly important to The Return, her debut album.
This year, there were five J Awards thanks to the admission of a new category, the You Done Good Award, dedicated to those who have offered up a lot to the music industry beyond music itself.
For this, Heidi Lenffer of Cloud Control won for co-establishing FEAT (aka Future Energy Artists), an organisation that lets artists offset the high carbon footprint of touring and creating music by investing in a solar farm. In an interview with Drive’s Veronica and Lewis after winning the award, Lenffer promised more good things to come, including a whole heap of artists getting involved, as well as interest from organisations outside of the music industry, including the Wallabies.
Find the full list of nominees below, with winners bolded.
J Award 2019
triple j Australian Album of the Year
G Flip – About Us
Hatchie – Keepsake
Hayden James – Between Us
Hilltop Hoods – The Great Expanse
Holy Holy – My Own Pool Of Light
Matt Corby – Rainbow Valley
Northlane – Alien
Sampa The Great – The Return
Stella Donnelly – Beware Of The Dogs
Thelma Plum – Better In Blak
Unearthed Artist of The Year
Adrian Eagle
The Chats
George Alice
Spacey Jane
Tones And I
Double J Artist Of The Year
Nick Cave
Julia Jacklin
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Sampa The Great
The Teskey Brothers
triple J and Rage Australian Music Video of the Year
Briggs {feat. Greg Holden} – ‘Life Is Incredible’ [Directed by Dylan River]
Flume – ‘Hi This Is Flume (Mixtape)’ [Directed by Jonathan Zawada]
The Chats – ‘Identity Theft’ [Directed by Matt Weston]
Thelma Plum – ‘Better In Blak’ [Directed by Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore]
Sampa The Great – ‘Final Form’ [Directed by Sanjay De Silva]
You Done Good Award
Dylan Alcott
Heidi Lenffer
NIMA’s
Harry the Poo Roadie