The QMAs are always a highlight of music in Queensland, as they showcase the best of the bunch, the creme dela creme so to put it. With that in mind, I was sitting on the edge of my chair, waiting for the best acts to give us a taste of their tunes, and see if my bets on the winners would return their odds.

Good Boy opened the night with a performance of Poverty Line, (which they took out the rock music award for). They had changed up their usual look of ruggers and nikes to long pants and buttoned up shirts, (which needed an iron, but at least they made the effort). The awards ceremony moved fast, with 4ZZZ radio host Ruth Gardener hosting the night, adding in a lot of funny jokes, ( mostly at her expense).

Going quickly through the categories, Tia Gostelow cleaned up, taking out the schools award and the singer-songwriter award, as well as closing the night with a performance of Vague Utopia. Other standout winners included Amy Shark (which admittedly was not surprising), taking out the regional award, the pop award and the prestigious song of the year award.

Most memorable award of the night went to the the heavy award winner, Lagerstein, who accepted by doing a shoey on stage, in true blue Queensland fashion. Chris Cobcroft who presented the award sounded as if he should have been a contender (or perhaps had had too many beers before presenting), as he did an honourable mimic of the heavy vocals when announcing all the finalists.

Cub Sport took out most popular group, for which when accepting said “when we started this band we didn’t think we would win most popular anything”, and did a perfect performance of their hit song Come On Mess Me Up. Unsurprisingly, Violent Soho took out album of the year for their record Waco. One member of the band was still recovering from the Dune Rats gig earlier in the week, and the other guys didn’t seem to get the dress code memo, but hey, thats what makes Violent Soho Violent Soho.

All in all the awards truly gave insight into how blossoming the Queensland music scene, and more importantly, the live music scene really is. If only people would stop moving to Melbourne, we would have a really fantastic thing going on here, (and possibly less shoeys).

Written by Olivia Shoesmith

Photography by Matt Dennien