Royalty collection agency APRA New Zealand was launched in 1926, and its songwriting award the Silver Scroll in 1965. To mark these occasions AudioCulture presents the first 25 Silver Scroll award-winners of the 21st Century, with commentary by AudioCulture writers and others. The winning songs of the Scroll show how songwriting has evolved in New Zealand to become waiata of Aotearoa. The baton has been passed from writers who first made an impact in the 1970s – Chris Knox and Neil Finn – to writers whose language is te reo – Rob Ruha, Anna Coddington, Marlon Williams. Aside from the language used, the winning songs of this period show how much more connected these Scroll songs are with the audience. Despite almost overwhelming material from offshore, awareness and support for these 25 songs – by the public and media – now approaches the heyday of the Loxene Golden Disc and C’mon. The Scroll-winning songs are listed chronologically, with title, songwriters and the performers who made the prominent recording.
2000 ‘My Only Friend’ – Chris Knox – Chris Knox
Chris Knox described the lyric to this delicate love song as being “as naked as I get.” The title, he said, was an exaggeration. “The song should have been called ‘My Best Friend’ but best friend didn’t scan well.” The lyrics did scan well and were honest, and Knox knew it, telling Grant Smithies: “It’s really nice when you hit that sweet spot and a song falls together naturally rather than endlessly labouring over it.”
2001 ‘Turn and Run’ – Neil Finn – Neil Finn with Sheryl Crow
Neil Finn’s second solo album One Nil was largely written at Piha, on Auckland’s west coast. It’s a wistful album with a languid, holiday feel. Several of its songs could have been Scroll finalists – ‘Rest of the Day Off’, ‘Anytime’, ‘Into the Sunset’ – but ‘Turn and Run’ got the nod. With Sheryl Crow collaborating on the vocal, the song’s reflective opening on acoustic guitar and Fender Rhodes builds to a distorted guitar wig-out reminscent of the Finn album. This clip is from the 7 Worlds Collide documentary, filmed at the St James Theatre in Auckland, April, 2001.
2002 ‘Misty Frequencies’ – Che Ness and Godfrey de Grut – Che Fu
It’s hard to express just how omnipresent Che Fu’s music was in the summer of 2001-2002, wrote Gareth Shute. “You’d be equally likely to hear it at hipster Grey Lynn BBQ as you would be to hear it at the Auckland City Mission.” Containing three Top 20 singles, the Navigator album entered the charts at No.1. “ ‘Misty Frequencies’ is a great example of what De Grut brought to the table,” wrote Shute. “The opening chords have a hint of jazz to them, but still sound like the type of funky Rhodes piano part that Stevie Wonder might have played ... he thought Che might like to use it as walk-on music. Instead, Che added a sublime vocal melody.”
2003 ‘For the People’ – Donald McNulty, Te Awanui Reeder, David Atai, Junior Rikiau and Feleti Strickson-Pua – Nesian Mystik
The members of Nesian Mystik had ancestral roots that included Māori, Cook Island, Tongan, and Samoan (as well as Palagi). “They were a surefire hit with Auckland’s Polynesian community, but the trick was to get beyond this,” wrote Gareth Shute. Their singles ‘It’s On’ and ‘For the People’ had “perfect hook-laden choruses and the multiple members rapping and singing over one another gave the sense of a party going on.”
2004 ‘Not Many’ – Malo Luafutu and Peter Wadams – Scribe
The chorus of Scribe’s ‘Not Many’ was an instant catchphrase, wrote Gareth Shute, “and the backing track had a perfect simplicity to it: a punchy beat overlaid with three ominous synth notes.” For a remix version P-Money suggested bringing in two of the best local MCs, “David Dallas (then known as “Con Psy”) brought his super-slick flow, while Savage (then a member of Deceptikonz) provided some street level aggression. Then Scribe got up for the last verse and killed it.”
2005 ‘It’s Too Late’ – Dann Hume, Peter Hume and Jon Hume – Evermore
A sparkling, rhythm-driven song with an exuberant, radio-friendly chorus, Evermore’s ‘It’s Too Late’ was just right for its use in the promo for teen drama The OC. The striking, crystal-clear keyboard intro accompanies the singer waking on a Monday morning with a head going every which way, regretting the dream he’s just left. Recovery comes in the soaring release: “Ride on, ride ’til early morning sun / Ride on, like the dawning of the day.”
2006 ‘Bathe in the River’ – Don McGlashan – Mt Raskil Preservation Society with Hollie Smith
Don McGlashan’s second Silver Scroll (the first was ‘Anchor Me’ in 1994), ‘Bathe in the River’ was an atypical gospel song written to order for Toa Fraser’s film No. 2. The idea was to replace a Mariah Carey song used as a stop gap. Working from the film script and a brief from Fraser, McGlashan made use of some sketches he had written earlier, “of some kind of secular gospel song about wanting to dive into life, not just tiptoe around the edges. So once I started, it flowed pretty easily.” Hollie Smith – who Fraser had heard singing with TrinityRoots – sang the lead vocal. “As soon as Hollie sang the first phrase I knew we had something extraordinary,” McGlashan told Gary Steel.
2007 ‘Albertine’ – Brooke Fraser – Brooke Fraser
The sprightly acoustic guitar backing of ‘Albertine’ belies the song’s deeply expressed concern. Written by Brooke Fraser after the success of her What To Do With Daylight album, the song is a reponse to a trip she made to Rwanda to promote child sponsorship in Africa for World Vision. The song is about a child she met there, and while the earnest chorus is a moving earworm, albeit unresolved lyrically: “Now that I have seen, I am responsible / Faith without deeds is dead / now that I have held you in my own arms, I cannot let go till you are.”
2008 ‘One Day’ – Jason Kerrison, Bobby Kennedy, Matt Treacy and Clinton Harris – Opshop
Jason Kerridge told writer Gary Steel he got the inspiration for Opshop’s ‘One Day’ from an interview he heard on RNZ National, while driving home from a tour. “Paul McCartney said ‘Let It Be’ was him trying to write from the perspective of Ray Charles. It seemed like an interesting method. My partner at the time had a big barney at me because she hated not getting to see me when I was away on tour. I thought, ‘I’m annoyed and I’m going to use that technique to try to write like the Eagles drummer, Don Henley.’ I sat down and as soon as I finished it, I felt the release from the process and chucked it in the corner. My partner found the ball of paper when she was cleaning up and fortunately put it on my lyrics pile.” When Kerrison played the song to Welsh-born, New Zealand based producer Greg Haver, “instantly he said, ‘that has to be on the record.’ ”
2009 ‘Apple Pie Bed’ – Lawrence Arabia and Luke Buda – Lawrence Arabia
Not so much catchy as contagious, Lawrence Arabia’s ‘Apple Pie Bed’ has a bounce and a wink to it, like a throwback to glam. Towards the end of the writing process, James Milne (aka Lawrence Arabia) played it to Luke Buda of Phoenix Foundation. He made some melodic suggestions, Milne recalled to Gareth Shute. “That’s why Luke was quite embarrassed about the whole thing. How it really came about was that I’d helped him with one tiny line in a song, ‘Crystal Ham’, and he gave me five per cent of the songwriting credit. I felt what he’d done in ‘Apple Pie Bed’ was more than what I’d done on his song, so I gave him five per cent back. Then it got nominated for the Silver Scroll Award and he was like – ‘Oh shit!’ But he was a great prop for the promotional photos, so it worked out well. Of course, now he’s convinced that he’ll never win the Silver Scroll award for a song he’s actually written.”
2010 ‘Young Blood’ – Aaron Short, Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith – The Naked and Famous
With dreamy melodic vocals underpinned by an expansive band sound, The Naked and Famous’ 2009 EP All of This hinted at the band’s future direction. ‘Young Blood’, the song that followed, would become the bedrock of their career, with millions of streams worldwide. Gareth Shute wrote that the seed of the song came from a chord progression that the band’s Alisa Xayalith was playing to herself at home, using a synth echo setting on her keyboard. When Thom Powers heard it from another room, he hurried in and suggested they should build a song around it. From the first line, the lyrics focused on the excitement and unnerving nature of being a young person entering the wider world – “We're only young and naïve still / We require certain skills / The mood it changes like the wind / Hard to control when it begins.”
2011 ‘Love Love Love’ – Dave Baxter – Avalanche City
The first of three singles released in advance of Avalanche City’s Our New Life Above the Ground album, ‘Love Love Love’ became the signature song of Dave Baxter, the band’s singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Nur Lajunen Tal wrote: “Its simple but impulsively memorable vocal hook of ‘I heard your heart sing love, love, love’ would situate itself firmly in this country’s collective consciousness. The poetically penned verses tell a story not only of love, but a longing for something greater.” The song’s whimisical animated video, by Josh Smith, featured a penguin couple going on an adventure, encountering pirates and sailing in a hot air balloon. ‘Love Love Love’ was used by TV2 for its brand commercial, making Avalanche City almost a household name, and the song went to No.1.
2012 ‘Everything to Me’ – Stephanie Brown – Lips
From Lips’ second EP Look, Listen, ‘Everything To Me’ was a soulful slow burner, playlisted on student radio stations, that introduced a new voice to the airwaves: Lips, aka Steph Brown. “The track was a wonderful laidback indie pop tune with an amazingly catchy chorus,” wrote Dedee Wirjapranata. NZ On Screen reports that the song’s video “uses scenes from a 1950s Hollywood Pacific Island romance, washed in sunset pink and orange. Brown's lyrics imagine a break from the daily grind as a toothsome couple frolic in a private paradise, unaware their world is about to change.”
2013 ‘Royals’ – Ella Yelich-O’Connor and Joel Little – Lorde
‘Royals’ was an international phenomenon, eclipsing the success of the previous century’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘How Bizarre’, and gave Lorde, aka Ella Yelich-O’Connor, the highest profile of any New Zealand songwriter and performer. Gabe McDonnell wrote that the song started life “as a minor concern: a mocking take on modern ‘aristocracy’ through the eyes of an ordinary, suburban kid.” Lorde and co-writer Joel Little (ex-Goodshirt), realised that they had something, so she continued to work on it. McDonnell: “ ‘Royals’ is a song of suburban defiance, of bonding with the weirdos, freaks and geeks. It was a magnificent, adolescent eye roll at the so-called sexy winners, but contained those touches of poetry (torn up town, diamond in the flesh) that made it special.”
2014 ‘Walk (Back to Your Arms)’ – Tami Neilson and Jay (Joshua) Neilson – Tami Neilson
Tami Neilson’s 2014 album Dynamite! took her right into the mainstream with its rockabilly Americana sounds. ‘Walk (Back to Your Arms)’ – the album’s lead track, co-written with her brother Jay (Joshua) Neilson. But the actual conception of the song was more intimate, Tami Neilson told Mike Alexander of Stuff: “I was a brand-new mum and was at home quite a bit with my first-born Charlie. You still have the creativity coursing through your veins – even if you don't have the time to pick up a guitar because your hands are full of baby. But I would sing the chorus around the house ... I can still remember, Charlie was crying and I was burping him and walking around the kitchen and then stopping and patting his back to the beat of what would become ‘Walk (Back To Your Arms)’. That’s how the melody and music was born. It's definitely a different way to how I have written before. Normally, I would pick up the guitar and write but I had my arms full at all times so I was writing the music and melody, the rhythm all without the use of an instrument except my voice.”
2015 ‘Multi-Love’ – Ruban and Kody Nielson – Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Godfrey de Grut chose ‘Multi-Love’ for his Songwriter's Choice column, describing it as “a mind-blowingly perfect construction ... As a song it spans multiple layers of musical and lyrical (narrative) tension pushing and pulling the listener through a veritable Willy Wonka factory of sonic sweetness. I immediately gravitated towards how exciting it was for UMO to intentionally thwart a straightforward definition of a conventional rock groove. The opening six-beat harmonic rhythm, which when coupled by a very UMO trait of stressing unimportant syllables, sets up a degree of tension, eerily reinforced by the developing storyline, fragmented though it is. As a listener, this tension drives me forward in each stanza until the release at a final perfect cadence leading into a more obvious common time groove. Perfect crafting. That the underlying saga of a doomed ménage à trois has been so candidly (and artfully) woven into what is ostensibly a funky 3:30 pop tune belies the song’s true nature as a bittersweet and deeply cautionary modern fable, rendered beautifully in song.”
2016 Award revoked
2017 ‘Green Light’ – Ella Yelich-O’Connor, Jack Antonoff, and Joel Little – Lorde
The first single off Lorde’s Melodrama album, ‘Green Light’ was co-written and co-produced by her with US pop producer Jack Antonoff, with additional writing by Joel Little. Gabe McDonnell described its release: “On 2 March 2017 music critics everywhere were poised over their keyboards. She opens the song describing putting on “make-up in somebody else’s car”. Right away you’re wondering who that somebody is. ‘Green Light’ traces a night out after a recent break-up, and the stories we tell our heartbroken selves: “She thinks you like the beach, you’re such a damn liar.” Midway through the song she perfectly heralds the whole shift of her life since she began writing: “I hear sounds in my mind/ brand new sounds in my mind”. And in the background a “house piano” comes storming in, picking the song up and into the club, ripe for dancing. This is a dancing-by-yourself anthem … In performance Lorde can’t help but spin and rock out when ‘Green Light’ kicks it up to second gear, and all the girls – and boys – dancing by themselves in their bedrooms whoop for joy.”
2018 ‘Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore’ – Marlon Williams – Marlon Williams (feat Aldous Harding)
Marlon Williams’s second album Make Way For Love funnelled complex, sometimes ugly emotions (jealousy, bitterness) into devastatingly gorgeous songs, wrote Kirsten Johnstone. “While the album was written and recorded in a rush, the songwriting showed Marlon was learning new tricks. The pinnacle of the album was ‘Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore’. It’s an astonishing song in many ways, not least of which is the fact that Aldous Harding agreed to sing as Marlon’s duet partner, from a separate studio in Cardiff, Wales. The five-minute song starts out as a stoic mantra, but two-thirds of the way through there’s an E minor 7 chord change that signals the truth of the matter. “That’s the moment where I don’t believe my own hype and the game’s given up.” Williams told the Takenote podcast, “It’s the one that was the most edifying. It’s the one that I actually learned from, from writing, and feel … And I feel that giving expression to something that I can’t express using ordinary language … yeah, that’s the closest thing to success I’ve felt as a songwriter.”
2019 ‘The Barrel’ – Aldous Harding – Aldous Harding
Aldous Harding’s Designer was an album filled with shuffling beats, surrealist lyrics, and a levity and playfulness not heard before, wrote Kirsten Johnstone. “Poaching a couple of musicians from Cate Le Bon’s band, including H Hawkline (Huw Evans) on bass, synths and backup vocals, and Stephen Black on saxophone, she returned to John Parish for the recording. Her friends talk about her sense of humour, and it came through in songs such as the title track, ‘Designer’: ‘That visionary shimmer / do not lose your young eyes / laughing at good work with your ugly son / give up your beauty, designer’. The first single off the album, ‘The Barrel’, came complete with a classic Aldous/Martin Sagadin music video. Harding shuffles around, looking down the barrel of the camera while dressed in a pilgrim-like costume inspired by surrealist film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Three minutes in, she’s a blue-masked goblin, and by the end, she’s in her underwear, wielding shakers.”
2020 ‘Glitter’ – Stella Bennett, Joshua Fountain and Djeisan Suskov – Benee
Besides being a charming, beguiling pop song, ‘Glitter’ is a landmark among the Scroll winners in that it is unequivocally a hit for a new era. Released as a single from Benee’s debut EP Fire on Marzz, it went viral on TikTok in 2019. At that year’s Aotearoa Music Awards, she picked up four awards, including best breakthrough artist. Ironically, ‘Glitter’ had been written a year earlier when, rather than attend the 2018 AMAs, she had decided to stay home and make music with her regular collaborators Josh Fountain and Djeisan Suskov. “We were all on the same energy buzz because we all kind of felt rebellious that we weren’t going to the awards,” Benee told Stuff. The lyrics recalled another evening out which ended in Benee being covered in glitter. In the NZ Herald, George Fenwick described the song as “A joyous track that swells and shines like an adolescent crush. Djeisan Suskov's twangy guitars gleam as bright as the title suggests, as Benee simply asks someone to hang out with her.” ‘Glitter’ is analysed by Matt Hoyes in AudioCulture’s Counting the Beat series.
2021 ‘All Your Ships Have Sailed’ – Troy Kingi – Troy Kingi
A decade ago, Troy Kingi set himself the task of releasing 10 albums in 10 years – all in different genres. He had already co-written the 2015 APRA Maioha Award-winning song ‘Aotearoa’ with Stan Walker. For his new challenge Kingi was quick off the mark, releasing a 22-song double album, Guitar Party at Uncle’s Bach, in 2016, soon followed by the tripped-out soul-psychedelics of Shake That Skinny Ass All the Way to Zygertron, political roots-eggae album Holy Colony Burning Acres, and Black Sea Golden Ladder, which won the 2021 best folk music Tūī at the Aotearoa Music Awards. ‘All Your Ships Have Sailed’, which won the 2021 Silver Scroll, was from his soul/R&B album The Ghost of Freddie Cesar, which channelled the Superfly era of Curtis Mayfield. “I’ve been watching the Silver Scrolls for as long as I can remember, before I even started on this journey,” he told The Big Idea website. “It feels a little bit surreal ... If I was to never get any awards again, I’m happy I’ve got this one.”
2022 ‘35’ – Ka Hao and Rob Ruha – Ka Hao and Rob Ruha
Rob Ruha (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Tainui, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Rongowhakaata, Ngā Ariki) was born in Gisborne in 1980, and grew up on Te Tai Rāwhiti, in the small coastal community of Wharekahika. He has been quick to acknowledge figures from home who were a source of knowledge and inspiration for him, naming them for NZ Musician in 2015: “Uncle Skip Paenga, Uncle Joss Stewart from Manutuke, Uncle Bill Kerekere … Aunty Emma Rogers, Aunty Kuini Moehau Reedy, Rikirangi Gage, Tuini Ngāwai – she is a haka god to me.” Legendary East Coast songwriters Tuini Ngāwai and Ngoi Pēwhairangi informed his own passion for writing songs from a Māori point of view, wrote Kahu Kutia for AudioCulture. The same deep sense of place is behind the one-off single Ruha made with Ka Hao, a youth choir from the area. It blends Ruha’s voice with hip hop and choral kapa haka. It celebrates he towns of Te Tairāwhiti, the East Cape and life on State Highway 35, on the East Coast of the North Island, from Ōpōtiki to Gisbtorne. It became a te reo viral sensation via TikTok in 2022, and won that year’s Silver Scroll – it was a special night for Ruha who was also musical director of the event.
2023 ‘Expert in a Dying Field’ – Benjamin Sinclair, Elizabeth Stokes, Jonathan Pearce, Tristan Deck – The Beths
We cross to San Francisco, where veteran US music critic Greil Marcus, responded to ‘Expert in a Dying Field’ in his September 2026 Real Life Top 10 column: “It’s wonderful when a band you’ve never heard of becomes your favourite as soon as you do. That happened to me with the Beatles, it happened with the Fastbacks, it happened with Sleater-Kinney, and now it’s happened with the Beths. In this video they’re in a sunny apartment in their native New Zealand, Elizabeth Stokes singing and playing guitar, looking straight ahead but so blankly she’s not looking you in the face, in another room with tapes rolling drummer Tristan Deck, in a third room guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and an electrician who could be anyone’s father fiddling with a box, drinking coffee, and wandering out on a deck where he can look down and see all of them in a garage instead rocking out and having fun. The song floats, then it hits, then it’s just there, the elevated sense of purpose and tension in any everyday affair, walking down the street or into a book store that should be the same every time but isn’t. The sound is so sweet that after watching a dozen times I have no idea what the words are and don’t care. What does the title refer to? Most of the Humanities departments in the United States? Love? I’ll figure it out later.”
2024 ‘Kātuarehe’ – Anna Coddington, Noema Te Hau III, Ruth Smith, and Kawiti Waetford – Anna Coddington
Anna Coddington’s 2024 Scroll-winning single ‘Kātuarehe’ showed a hint of the “Māori funk” she had brewed up for the new album she was recording when her homelife went through a terrible ordeal. The 2023 flash floods that hit Auckland forced Coddington, her partner, DJ Dick Johnson, and their children were forced to abandon their house as the waters rose. Among the many belongings they lost was box filled with handwritten lyrics from every song she hadd ever written. In his AudioCulture profile of Coddington, Gareth Shute wrote that the tracks for the 2024 album Te Whakamiha were primarily written in te reo Māori, but cleverly featured occasional lines/sections in English as access points for listeners who didn’t understand the language. “Rather than revisiting where she had been as an artist, the work sounded incredibly fresh and provided the best example to date of Coddington’s undimmed skills as a songwriter and musician.”
2025 ‘Aua Atu Rā’ – Marlon Williams, Te Pononga Tamati Elliffe (KOMMI) – Marlon Williams
Marlon Williams had sung in te reo Māori since he was young but only in recent years did he begin to learn to speak it. “Despite his limited proficiency,” Gareth Shute wrote, “he felt himself drawn to writing songs in the language. He fortuitously befriended the musician and educator, Kommi, who agreed to help him in this exploration.” Williams felt that using te reo brought a freshness to his work and he also drew influences from popular waiata of the past. There were also many touchpoints for those with a limited understanding of te reo. ‘Aue Atu Rā’ – the lead single of the album Te Whare Tīwekaweka – used words and phrases that were well known such as “moana” (the word for “sea/ocean” made popular by the film), “aroha mai” (“sorry”/ “have mercy on me”), and “titiro mai” (“look at me”, as often used by school teachers). Writing in te reo, said Nick Bollinger, “connected Williams with sounds that have not been so prominent in his music before. In ‘Au Atu Ra’ he slips into the classic Māori strum, giving the song a musical ancestry that goes back to Prince Tui Teka or the Howard Morrison Quartet.” When ‘Au Atu Ra’ won the Silver Scroll, it was the first time a song with lyrics completely in te reo had won the award. It also immediately felt like a standard, updating the Māori popular songbook.
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