ARIAS 2009

As we celebrate the recent news of Josh Pyke’s two ARIA nominations, Best Adult Contemporary Album (also nominated Bob Evans, David Campbell, Little Birdy and Paul Dempsey) and Best Male Artist (also nominated Bob Evans, Paul Dempsey, C.W. Stoneking and Daniel Merriweather) I thought it would be appropriate to take a step back in time and look at the past ARIA awards.

Starting in 2006, some of you may (or may not know) that Josh was nominated for Best Pop Release with his release “Feeding The Wolves”, up against The Veronicas, Ben Lee, Shannon Noll and The Rogue Traders. Much to our dismay (but somewhat unsurprisingly) The Veronicas took the ARIA award.

A year later Josh Pyke returned to the ARIAs and 2007 was most definitely his year. “Memories & Dust” was nominated for 5 ARIA awards, with Josh winning 3 awards; Best Adult Contemporary Album, Producer of the Year (with Wayne Connolly) and Engineer of the Year (with Wayne Connolly). Best Male Artist was awarded to Gotye and Best Breakthrough Album to Sneaky Sound System. Josh’s acceptance speech for Best Adult Contemporary Album wasn’t aired but although he would have been overwhelmed with remembering who to thank, he still found the time to thank those in his fanclub forum.

In 2008, although Josh wasn’t nominated, he took to the ARIA stage along side Vanessa Amorosi to present the award for Best Blues and Roots Album.

The 2009 ARIA awards will be televised on Thursday November 26th at 8:30pm on Channel 9. On behalf of all of us here at Friends of Josh Pyke (and no doubt, all JP fans) I’d like to congratulate you Josh on your ARIA nominations. Whether you go home with an ARIA, two or none at all, we’ll still be around to support you and remind you there’s always the 2010 ARIA awards.

-sabi