The 2019 ARIA Awards season kicked off today with an event in Sydney, with the first handful of awards handed out and the nominees for the main categories announced, including Best Pop Release, Breakthrough Artist, Song Of The Year and the coveted Album Of The Year.
Thelma Plum not only won her first ARIA ever today for Best Cover Art by artist Emilie Pfitzner, but ended up with five other nominations including Best Pop Release, Breakthrough Artist, Best Female, Best Album and Best Video, taking her total tally up to six this year. Incredible for her debut album.
Cool Accidents caught up with Thelma to chat about the news and she was over the moon.
"It's been a really good day. And my team was so loud, I'm like, 'ahhhh stop embarrassing me!' But yeah, it was so nice," she said of the Best Cover Art win today.
read more: Tones And I And Thelma Plum Have Racked Up A Heap Of ARIA Awards Nominations
We hope the fluffy little alpaca boi featured on the cover gets to take home an ARIA Award too.
"He was a beautiful boy, he was a baby and he was so well behaved. A real darling, he was such a good little boy. We had him and I wanted to have two little lambies but the two little lambies got the cut! I'd have them all, all day."
Better In Blak not only picked up six nominations today but also debuted at #4 back in July, literally as Thelma was taking to a full GW McLennan tent at Splendour In The Grass.
"It's just nice when you work so hard and put so much work and this record is so personal for me, and I'm sharing stuff that is so personal, it's nice that it seems to resonate with people. And Splendour was crazy! That's the best gig I've ever played in my whole life, that was insane."
She adds that she's "so proud" of Better In Blak's Video Of The Year nomination, which is a fan-voted category. You can vote for the song just by typing 'ARIA Awards' into Google. "I always knew I wanted to have women, I wanted to have my sisters and Aboriginal people, it's really good!
"There was four [Indigenous people] in that Best Video category, I was like fuck yeah! It was awesome."
Though it won't be her first time at the ARIAs, Thelma says she's getting amped to glam up.
"I'm pretty excited about getting bougie and getting dressed up. I'm already starting to think about what I'm gonna wear, but also just being in the room with all of my friends, celebrating Aussie music! Pretty cool."
Elsewhere, Tones And I picked up the most ARIA nominations of all - eight - while others that cleaned up include Hilltop Hoods, The Teskey Brothers (seven nominations each) and Julia Jacklin (six nominations).
