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Artist News Awards Business News Management & Funding
Stormzy takes surprise trophy at Artist & Manager Awards
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 15 November 2019
The Music Managers Forum and Featured Artists Coalition’s Artist & Manager Awards took place in London last night, with surprises aplenty along the way. The big one was the appearance of Stormzy to accept a prize that had not previously been announced.
The rapper, his manager Tobe Onwuka and the entire team at his #Merky company were presented with the new Team Achievement Award, in recognition of their contribution to British music and culture. Which, through music, book publishing and more, is sizeable. “My team is my everything”, he said from the stage, showing that he had been properly briefed on what award it was that he was picking up. Probably by his excellent team.
Another surprise was Lewis Capaldi giving up part of his Artist Of The Year prize to someone else. Not the trophy; he’s keeping that. But with it came an all expenses paid trip to Columbia to record at the Selina Music Studio in Medellin.
In a video accepting the prize, he announced that he was letting new artist Charlotte have that. I think it was supposed to be a nice gesture, not just that he’d watched ‘Narcos’ on Netflix and got a bit scared. Anyway, she came up on stage to accept that bit of the prize and will now be jetting off for a week in South America. Which is nice.
There were other winners too. Would you like to know who they were? I knew you’d say that. Here they all are:
Manager Of The Year: Debbie Gwyther, FEAR
Breakthrough Manager: Sophie Bloggs, YMU Music
Writer / Producer Manager: Sandy Dworniak, This Much Talent
Entrepreneur: Andy Varley, Insanity Group
Team Achievement – Stormzy, Tobe Onwuka, Team #Merky
FanFair Outstanding Contribution To Live Music: Sam Fender & Owain Davies
Artist Of The Year: Lewis Capaldi
Breakthrough Artist: Aitch
Pioneer: Neneh Cherry
Managers’ Manager: Rebecca Boulton & Andy Robinson, Prime Management
Artists’ Artist: Nile Rodgers
