Songwriter of the Year

And the Nominees are ...

If songwriting was an Olympic sport, the UK and Ireland would surely top the medal table.

Because, just as with our athletes in Tokyo, The Ivors 2020 songwriting squad delivered across the board, coming up with a string of both incredible songs and enormous hits.

So, no wonder The Ivors have introduced nominations for this award for the first time since it was introduced in 1970, with shortlisted writers chosen by The Ivors Awards Committee and voted on by Academy members. And it will surely require a photo finish to separate this brilliant, diverse group of songwriters, all of whom had a huge impact on the music world across 2020.

Look at AJ TRACEY. The West London rapper describes his 2020 as “crazy and historical” and not without good reason. Because, despite perpetual lockdowns, it was a year that saw his songwriting hit Olympic levels. It started with a banger as Rain, cowritten and performed with Aitch and Tay Keith, hit the Top 3. That was joined in the year’s Top 40 best-sellers by Dinner Guest, released with MoStack, and another Top 5 hit.

Tracey’s stellar rise has been attained completely independently. But that DIY approach has never limited his ambition, with Tracey proving himself one of the most versatile writers on the scene.

So his 2020 also featured everything from the street-savvy Secure The Bag! 2 EP to West Ten, an ode to his beloved Ladbroke Grove postcode, performed with Mabel (and co-written with the pop star, plus fellow Songwriter Of The Year nominee Kamille, Fred Gibson and Take A Day Trip), as well as many more hits.

Such achievements may be sobering for those of us who spent 2020 on the sofa, binging boxsets. But it was far from atypical for this crop of superstar songwriters.

Take KAMILLE, for example. She is in the hits business – and business has never been better.

Kamille

The star is forging a successful artist career but, as a songwriter, she also had her fingerprints all over 2020’s finest pop moments.

She made a stellar seven-track contribution to Little Mix’s sixth album, Confetti, including cowriting three of the record’s huge hits: Break Up Song, Holiday and the title track (with fellow Songwriter Of The Year nominee MNEK, plus TMS and Maegan Cottone).

But that was just for starters. Kamille also co-wrote Mabel’s Top 10 hits, Boyfriend and West Ten; contributed to Clean Bandit’s Tick Tock; worked on a brace of Tiesto bangers; and even found time to get involved with Headie One’s Ain’t It Different and Dua Lipa’s game-changing Future Nostalgia album.

All of that showcased her stellar talent for crossover songs in almost any genre, and adds up to a golden year by anyone’s standards. But for Kamille, it was simply business as usual.

Celeste

Jamie Hartman

Also doing the business in 2020 were CELESTE & JAMIE HARTMAN. Co-writing chemistry is rarely an exact science, but their partnership has proved more successful than anything you could come up with in a laboratory.

The pair came together to write ahead of Celeste’s debut album, which would eventually hit No.1 in 2021.

At the time, Celeste Waite was the hotly-tipped winner of the BRIT Awards Rising Star and the BBC Sound Of Poll in 2019. Hartman, meanwhile, was the former frontman of Noughties stars Ben’s Brother, now enjoying a second career as the co-writer of blockbuster hits.

Together, they sprinkled songwriting gold dust across 2020 like something from the magical John Lewis Christmas advert that their A Little Love song soundtracked. It was the first original song to be used in the festive commercial blockbuster. And there was plenty more where that came form. Songs such as Stop This Flame, I Can See The Change, Little Runaway and Love Is Back laid the ground for what would become one of the most successful UK debut albums of recent years and proved a unique songwriting partnership had been created.

KID HARPOON & HARRY STYLES have also turned out to be an inspirational double act, with their partnership demonstrating the value of taking your time, even in today’s sometimes feverish hitmaking business.

Kid Harpoon

Harry Styles

The pair had already forged a productive collaboration. But on Styles’ second album, Fine Line – released at the very end of 2019 and one of the dominant global albums in 2020 – their alliance really hit its stride.

Fine Line became the second biggest-seller of 2020 in the UK and hit No.5 on the year’s IFPI Top 10 Global Albums – the only UK record to make the list. And the album’s songs – 11 of which were co-written by Harpoon and Styles, including the hits Falling, Golden and the cultural phenomenon that is Watermelon Sugar – became omnipresent on streaming and radio playlists across the planet. At the heart of all this success was the partnership between two hitmakers whose artist careers had taken very different paths, but whose co-writing proved uniquely empathetic. Patience, as ever, remains a songwriting virtue.

Indeed, this year’s crop of nominees display many winning attributes. It’s fitting that Uzoechi Emenike – aka MNEK – featured, as both artist and co-writer, on a 2020 anthem called Head & Heart. Because the star brings those two qualities to everything he works on.

And in 2020, MNEK worked on a lot. With his presence a hallmark of quality, his 2020 catalogue represents a vast array of hits that speak directly to the nation.

So, as well as Joel Corry’s No.1 Head & Heart, he helped bring out the best in a staggering array of pop talent. From Jonas Blue and Paloma Faith (Mistakes) to Sigala ft. Becky Hill (Heaven On My Mind) and from HRVY and Matoma (Good Vibes) to KSI (Really Love) and Ella Henderson ft. Roger Sanchez (Dream On Me), MNEK was in the mix to almost guarantee hit status. MNEK also proved crucial to longer-form projects, working on smash hit albums including Steps’ What The Future Holds, Paloma Faith’s Infinite Things, Dua Lipa’s Club Future Nostalgia and, of course, Little Mix’s Confetti. Because that’s the MNEK way: head, heart and soul, every single time.

MNEK

And that sums up this unique field of 2020 Songwriter Of The Year contenders. Only one can win gold in the form of the Ivor for Songwriter Of The Year but, when it comes to writing the bangers that matter, they’re all winners.