Grammy Noms & Ariana Grande Collabs: What Winning An APRA Award Can Do For Your Career

The Breakthrough Songwriter Of The Year award is one of the most sought after accolades going at the annual APRA Awards. 

With this year's nominees including Jack River, Baker Boy, G Flip, Dean Lewis and Tash Sultana, we thought we'd take a look back at some of the award's past winners and what they've achieved since.

2010

Nominees:
The Temper Trap - Jonathon Aherne, Tobias Dundas, Dougy Mandagi, Lorenzo Sillitto 
Jessica Mauboy
Daniel Merriweather
Lisa Mitchell

Winner: 
Empire Of The Sun - Nick Littlemore, Jonathan Sloan, Luke Steele

With a mega track like Walking On A Dream, Empire Of The Sun taking out the 2010 award makes a whole lotta sense. The group, which is made up of The Sleepy Jackson/DREAMS' Luke Steele and PNAU's Nick Littlemore, have since released another two albums, Ice On The Dune in 2013 and Two Vines in 2016. Steele is currently touring around the US as part of the Walking On A Dream Decade Anniversary tour.

2011

Nominees: 
Birds Of Tokyo - Anthony Jackson, Ian Kenny, Adam Spark, Adam Weston
The Jezabels - Nikolas Kaloper, Samuel Lockwood, Hayley McGlone, Heather Shannon
Tame Impala (Kevin Parker)
Dan Sultan & Scott Wilson 

Winner:
Megan Washington

The Breakthrough Songwriter Of The Year Award was just one of three very impressive awards that Washington picked up for her 2010-released album, I Believe You Liar (Washington also picked up Best Female Artist and Breakthrough Artist - Release at the 2010 ARIA Awards). Washington last dropped an album in 2014, has shared a very impressive TED Talk, showcased at BIGSOUND in 2017 and performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House later that month. Her new single, American Spirit, dropped in January this year.

2012

Nominees: 
Daniel Rankine & Paul Ridge (Drapht)
Kimbra
Lanie Lane
Matt Corby

Winner: 
Boy & Bear - Killian Gavin, Jon Hart, Timothy Hart, David Hosking, Jacob Tarasenko

2011's Moonfire cleaned up a stack of awards for Boy & Bear - including a whopping four ARIAs and of course, the Breakthrough Songwriter Of The Year award. They've followed it up with 2013's Harlequin Dream and 2015's Limit Of Love which both scored #1 spots on the ARIA Albums chart. They're currently putting together album number four.

2013

Nominees: 
DNA - Anthony Egizii & David Musumeci
Alpine - Phoebe Baker, Louisa James, Ryan Lamb, Christian O'Brien, Timothy Royall, Phillip Tucker
Seth Sentry - Seth Marton & Stephen Mowat
Yung Warriors - Tjimba Possum-Burns & Danny Ramzan

Winner: 
360 & Styalz Fuego - Matthew Colwell & Kaelyn Behr

Since taking out the award in 2013, rapper 360 (Matthew Colwell) and producer Styalz Fuego (Kaelyn Behr) continued working together, including on 360's album Utopia in 2014. Behr has since worked with Peking Duk, Daniel Johns and more. 360 released his most recent album, Vintage Modern, in 2017.

2014

Nominees:
Vance Joy (James Keogh)
Jagwar Ma - Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield
Kylie Sackley
Louis Schoorl
Hiatus Kaiyote - Paul Bender, Simon Mavin, Perrin Moss, Naomi Saalfield

Winner: 
Louis Schoorl

Louis Schoorl's songwriting catalogue is more than impressive - in the time since winning the award, he's worked with the Backstreet Boys, Jonas Blue, CXLOE and more, and contributed to the Ugly Dolls original soundtrack.

2015

Nominees: 
Chet Faker (Nicholas Murphy)
The Preatures - Isabella Manfredi, Jack Moffitt, Gideon Bensen, Thomas Champion & Luke Davidson
Sheppard - Jason Bovino, Amy Sheppard, George Sheppard
M-Phazes (Mark Landon)

Winner:
5 Seconds Of Summer - Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings, Calum Hood, Ashton Irwin 

Ummm, there's not really much more that we can say about this one - 5SOS are taking over the world...

2016

Nominees: 
David Le'aupepe
Troye Sivan
Marlon Williams
Jarryd James

Winner:
Alex Hope

Alex Hope is certainly making a name for herself - in the past three years alone, she's worked with Troye Sivan, Missy Higgins, Ruel, Ben Platt and a stack more artists. We're expecting big things from the songwriter/producer in the next few years.

2017

Nominees: 
David Le'aupepe
Rufus - Jon George, James Hunt &Tyrone Lindqvist
Meg Mac
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Stu MacKenzie

Winner:
Troye Sivan

10.3m Instagram followers, 2.6m on Facebook, 8.97m on Twitter and 6.9m on Youtube - Sivan seems to be doing okay...

2018

Nominees: 
Alex Lahey
Ben Abraham
Vera Blue (Celia Pavey)
Gretta Ray

Winner: 
Sarah Aarons

Last year's winner Sarah Aarons has had a huge 12 months, which includes, you know, GETTING NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY! Aarons is back from the 2019 awards with a stack of nominations, see them here.