2026 Taite Music Award season<\/a> is the perfect time for our entire nation to get excited about the EGOT of New Zealand music, the STAG:<\/p>\nA Silver Scroll, APRA\u2019s annual songwriting award.
\nA Taite Music Award, given yearly by Independent Music NZ to recognise an album\u2019s creativity and excellence.
\nAny Aotearoa Music Award (the AMAs, formerly the New Zealand Music Awards, formerly the Tuis, formerly the RATAs, originally the Loxene Golden Disc).
\nA single or album with enough sales and\/or streams to be certified Gold by Recorded Music NZ. Admittedly, Platinum certification is twice as impressive as Gold, but no-one wants to win PATS.<\/p>\n
We all ought to be excited about STAGs thanks to Marlon Williams. He\u2019s already got two Silver Scrolls, half a dozen Aotearoa Music Awards (plus seven nominations this year), and two Gold records. For eight years all he\u2019s needed is a Taite Music Prize. He\u2019s been a finalist three times already, and he\u2019s in the mix again this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Williams first made the shortlist in 2016 when the Taite went to Silicon, aka Kody Neilson. The previous year Neilson had shared the Silver Scroll with his brother, Ruban, for writing \u2018Multi-Love\u2019 by UMO. As the Mint Chicks, the brothers also won 5 AMAs in 2007 for Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! That album was a bit of a slow burner and took until 2018 to go Gold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Marlon Williams missed out on the 2019 Taite Music Prize, it went to Avantdale Bowling Club. They were led by Tom Scott. Scott\u2019s first group, Home Brew, had already nabbed a 2012 AMA and gone Gold in 2013. This year, Scott is a finalist again and has extended his Taite record to seven finals. Even so, he remains a highly decorated _TAG, having never even been nominated for the Silver Scroll.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like the Taite, the Silver Scroll is a single, annual award. They are the two rarest achievements for STAG hunters. Get them both in the trophy cabinet and the rest ought to take care of itself, right? Not so fast. Let\u2019s look at 2023.<\/p>\n
The 14th Taite Music Prize was won by Princess Chelsea over no fewer than four holders of the Silver Scroll, including Marlon Williams. Not that she denied four potential STAGs. Neither The Beths nor Tami Neilson have a Gold record (yet). Aldous Harding does, for her single \u2018The Barrel\u2019, but despite a few nominations there\u2019s no AMA on her CV. Only Marlon Williams had the chance to walk away as a STAG. It didn\u2019t happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s 2026, and Williams has his fourth shot at a Taite. This time around he\u2019s the only Silver Scroller on the shortlist. The only S_AG among the finalists. The single chance.<\/p>\n
The certified STAGs<\/p>\n
If Marlon Williams completes the STAG, he\u2019ll be joining an exclusive club. Thanks to Wikipedia, much searching of RadioScope, and various news archives, I can officially report that there are a grand total of four STAGs. Maybe five.<\/p>\n
The major limiting factor is the Taite Music Prize, which didn\u2019t exist before the inaugural award went to Lawrence Arabia in 2010 (he\u2019s still a STA_ today). This is a serious blow to a number of S_AGs. Think of longstanding legends with names like Dobbyn, Finn, Runga and McGlashan. Instead our first STAG was a teenager who cleaned the whole thing up in about 400 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Dave Dobbyn, Bic Runga and Don McGlashan would all be assumed STAGs but don\u2019t hold the official title<\/p>\n
The OG STAG was, of course, Lorde. \u2018Royals\u2019 went Gold almost instantly in March 2013 and won the Silver Scroll that October. In November she grabbed an armful of AMAs. By the time the Taite ceremony rolled around in April 2014, she had the good grace to ask that her $10,000 and other prizes be shared among the other finalists. They probably hadn\u2019t bothered to prepare speeches.<\/p>\n
Lorde poses with six Vodafone Music Awards in 2017. Lorde got a full STAG in 2013\/14 for a single song (\u2018Royals\u2019), a feat that may never be repeated. (Photo by Phil Walter\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Remember how Kody Neilson shared a bunch of AMAs and a Silver Scroll with his brother, Ruban? Ruben had beaten him to the Taite with UMO\u2019s first, Kody-free album in 2012. So in 2018 the Mint Chicks\u2019 eventual Gold record actually minted two STAGs with the same surname and different Ts.<\/p>\n
Troy Kingi became a STAG in 2021, but you can argue over exactly when. The last piece might have been that year\u2019s Silver Scroll, which he won for \u2018All Your Ships Have Sailed\u2019. He already owned the 2020 Taite Music Prize, and he\u2019d started picking up AMAs in 2018. The question is whether to count the 2015 Gold certification given to \u2018Aotearoa\u2019, by Stan Walker feat. Ria Hall, Troy Kingi And Maisey Rika. Is \u201cfeat.\u201d enough? If not it was only a few months later, in December, that Kingi\u2019s True Love earned its own Gold star and the STAG was confirmed.<\/p>\n
Kody Nielson, Ruban Nielson and Troy Kingi are certified STAGs<\/p>\n
Now we get to a more contestable claim. The Taite Music Prize may only date back to 2010, but the Independent Music NZ Classic Record award is handed out at the same ceremony. Consider it a backdated equivalent of the Taite. Since half the fun of the EGOT is arguing about Daytime Emmys and honorary Oscars, it only makes sense to throw the IMNZ Classic Album into the STAG mix and see how annoyed people get.<\/p>\n
That would make Shona Laing the fifth and final STAG. In 1973 her single \u20181905\u2019 went Gold and she won three AMAs, which were called RATAs at the time. Fourteen years later \u2018Soviet Snow\u2019 earned the 1988 Silver Scroll. That song was from South, which became an IMNZ Classic Album in 2020. Like some sort of anti-Lorde, Laing\u2019s slog to STAG status took 47 years.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Marlon Williams\u2019 wait \u2013 13 years and counting, but maybe not for much longer \u2013 isn\u2019t so bad after all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The winner of the 2026 Taite Music Prize, and possibly also a STAG, will be announced on April 29. EGOT originator Philip Michael Thomas is still waiting to be nominated for any of its four constituent awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s just received another seven Aotearoa Music Award nominations, but Marlon Williams only needs the Taite to complete…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[192661,203681,156,79690,111,139,69,1066,128784],"class_list":["post-394207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amas","tag-apra-silver-scrolls","tag-entertainment","tag-marlon-williams","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pop-culture","tag-taite-music-prize"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}