Lorde’s big night

Judges give songwriting Green Light

Lorde has won New Zealand’s top songwriting award for the second time. Her song Green Light claimed the top honours at the APRA Silver Scroll Awards last night in Dunedin. Lorde won along with her co-writers Jack Antonoff and Joel Little. While none of the Green Light team could attend, Lorde, on tour overseas, sent a message. “I can’t believe it. I really wanted to win the Silver Scroll Award, I just feel like it’s so prestigious and important. I always love and respect the songs that end up in the Silver Scrolls,” she said.

“Thank you for honouring Green Light . . . The second it came out, I knew it felt like a bit of my heart, right in the song. Thank you so much, I wish I was there!”

Green Light was the first single off Lorde’s second album, Melodrama. It launched with an elaborate teaser campaign that unfurled in the week before its release and saw fans decoding cryptic tweets and rushing around various Auckland landmarks. The strategy worked, sending the song to number one in the New Zealand charts.

“As a song, Green Light instantly hit its mark,” said Anthony Healey, head of NZ operations for APRA AMCOS.

The victory was the second for Lorde and Little, who won in 2013 for Royals. It was the third time Lorde had been a Silver Scroll finalist. The Clean

were Tim Prebble — Claire Cowan — Hillary The Clean — Hamish Kilgour, David Kilgour, Robert Scott, and Peter Gutteridge inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame. Other winners included teenage metal act Alien Weaponry, who collected the APRA Maihoa Award for their grunty anthem Raupatu, and Wellington composer/violinist Salina Fisher, who won the SOUNZ contemporary Award for the second year in a row with her composition

Torino.