Lankum win the Choice Prize album of the year for False Lankum. Read/watch the speeches
The 19th annual Choice Music Prize ceremony took place in Vicar Street on Thursday, March 7. The show saw eight of the 10 nominated acts perform and ended with Lankum claiming the album of the year prize for False Lankum. You can read some of the speeches on the night below, including Dave Fanning on U2’s Achtung Baby being named classic album, Denise Chaila revealing the winners, and Ian Lynch’s acceptance speech.
The shortlist for Irish album of the year 2023 was:
CMAT – Crazymad, For Me (CMATBABY/AWAL)
Grian Chatten – Chaos For The Fly (Partisan Records)
John Francis Flynn – Look Over The Wall, See The Sky (River Lea Recordings)
Kojaque – Phantom of the Afters (Soft Boy Records)
Lankum – False Lankum (Rough Trade Records)
Rachael Lavelle – Big Dreams (Rest Energy)
Soda Blonde – Dream Big (Overbite Records)
The Murder Capital – Gigi’s Recovery (Human Season Records)
The Scratch – Mind Yourself (Perrystown Music Limited)
Ezra Williams – Supernumeraries (Ezra Williams / AWAL)
Dave Fanning on U2’s Achtung Baby being named classic album winner
(Bono has obviously drawn a lot of criticism for his relative silence on the genocide in Gaza, so Achtung Baby being named classic album in the first place felt like odd timing or bad optics, and it was no surprise that there were boos in the audience and cries of ‘Palestine’ during Fanning’s speech. Also strange to hear Fanning say that actually, he prefers The Joshua Tree.)
Dave Fanning: OK, very briefly, you know what the winner is, you know what it's all about. This was an album that when they made it in the early 90s they were one of the biggest bands in the world. And when they did make it in the early 90s, they went to Berlin, which was a huge mistake, a massive mistake for two reasons: Their shit wasn't together and they hated each other. If you see any documentary or read any book, you realise if U2 were ever gonna break up, it was the first four weeks of being in Berlin. It was a fucking disaster. But what happened was after that, they decided to be good Dublin boys and get it together and get their shit together and they did. So what happened was they needed to get one song to happen; bizarrely, it's called 'One', it finally did happen. And then everything sort of fell into place in the old music they did with the new music that was happening. They married the two and most U2 fans - I don't, I think the Joshua Tree's better but anyway - most U2 say that Achtung Baby is the greatest album they ever made. And maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But certainly it started something brand new in the 1990s that was amazing. The tour that came with it was Zoo TV, then Pop Mart happened and then, do you remember the claw, all that stuff, and now they're doing that whole thing in Vegas. It's bizarre. So the big thing that happened in terms of a second movement was Achtung Baby. Now, the other thing is that, as you'll see, I don't have an award here to hand out to anybody, because at the moment, they're actually sweeping the floor and washing the dishes over there in Vegas because they've finished their 40 nights [at Sphere] so they're working very hard. Having said that, the award is with Edge, is with Adam. The two of them have it together and if you want to see them thanking you all shut the fuck up and listen. Adam, Edge let's see you all with your award.
Edge (prerecorded video message): Hello to everyone in Vicar Street. Thank you so much for this award. If someone had told us back then in 94 that Achtung Baby would be helping us fill arenas in Vegas and picking up awards like this, we would never have believed it. The album is a great example of why following through on a vision, no matter what the consequences, is crucial. It was a very intense work. We almost broke up the band trying to make it, so to all you young artists, don't listen to the naysayers, make the best and most uncompromising music that you know how, don't water it down. Make it exactly as you hear it, because that's what us music fans want.
Adam: Thank you very much to the Choice Music Awards. There's so much talent in Ireland across all the arts, particularly in music, which is obvious when you look at the standard of the nominees tonight. Good luck to everyone and have a great night.
Denise Chaila introducing Lankum as winners
Hi. So about two weeks ago, my friend Adam Fogarty sent me a voicenote on WhatsApp, yeah. saying 'hey, I'm talking to the people at the Choice Music awards and they were like, wow, would you like to present this because you never got to do that. You never got to be in the room when you were winning your award.' I didn't, you know, and so this is quite insane because there's a lot of energy in the room and there's a lot of love in the room for a lot of people. I'm going to come from behind the podium because I'm not trying to hide. When they asked me to do this, they said something really profound to me. They said that, 'we trust you to be yourself and to do this in a way that feels good to you'. So thank you, Adam, for sharing that with me. So I'm going to do some housekeeping in the room with you really quickly because sometimes in the frenetic noise of an awards show, the excitement, we forget each other and we forget why we're here. And I'm a big believer in bringing us back to centre. We love music. We love music a lot. And there are many ways up the mountain for Mohammad to climb, and it's not linear. It's not linear because we're all extremely different and sometimes we get caught up in this idea of industry that does not make sense. And industry does not make sense because actually this is about community. There was no machine, there was no cog that could distil music into something that feels like machinery and corporation. And that is actually why we're here because corporation doesn't make sense when magic comes into the picture. This is about magic. I think I spent a lot of time really insecure you know, like my career was formed during the pandemic and I've spent a lot of time with teams of people who are making things happen in the background. I've spent a lot of time not with people who love music and want to see it but with people who love music and need to create spaces for it and need to create moments for it. So I think actually, it's kind of a weird choice to have me here because I don't think I'm a real musician still. I am definitely an imposter. Sorry about it and that is not because I don't believe in myself. That's just because this has been a very weird time for me. And so I'm coming to you not as somebody who is like deeply defined in my role as a musician but somebody who was just like, OK, look, I tripped, fell and stumbled into something that feels really good, but doesn't always make sense. I do not have all the language I do not know how to read sheet music. I can not talk to you like somebody who has studied this has talked to you but I can talk to you as somebody who had a plan, whose plan was supported by my desires, because my desires led me down a particular path. And that's kind of the magic of this whole thing is that you don't know what's going to happen next. Yeah.
So housekeeping, we love music. We love music because it moves something in our spirit. We love music because it causes us to dream. We love music because it connects us to tradition. We love music because it connects us to home. We love music because our future is distilled in the moments when we are able to say what we mean without flinching. We love music because there is something about us that wants to dance. We love music, because when you close your eyes and hear somebody tell you a truth that you have never confessed to anybody in your real life there is something that moves in your spirit. We love music because there is something in Ireland particularly that is actually radical and revolutionary about the way we move in the space. We love music because power is not about authority and institution. It is about how you are able to tell truth that shakes mountains. We love this thing and we love each other and sometimes I think that we forget that there are hopes at stake. Sometimes I think we forget that we have the right to have hopes at stake. And so I'm not coming to saying like 'Oh no, I'm gonna announce the winner and that's just it.' No, you've seen everybody on this stage confess their dreams to you. It has been 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, but they have confessed their dreams out loud in the space. And there are so many people here who couldn't even say a word if they caught behind a pulpit and had a mic in their hand. Because this is hard. It's not easy to be here and be confident and like look at Faye going like this, man. Or look at CMAT on her own strumming a guitar and look at Kojaque and look at Murder Capital. It's not easy, and it doesn't get easier. But it gets good because we look in each other's eyes and then we fall in love. You know like we're falling in love with each other because these are our dreams. This is not business. This is heart. Yeah. And I don't know actually why I'm saying this too except I've always wanted to say this to somebody, that we have soft hearts and we're not supposed to make them hard to sell things. This music isn't for selling it's for sharing. And we're not America and I don't want us to be and we're not anywhere else in the world and I don't want us to be because this just matters. It just matters. It just matters. So hi. My name is Denise I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. Yeah
We do have a job together and actually it's two jobs. The first job is that there is a winner tonight. And we're going to hold them and we're going to lift them up and we're going to scream and shout and stomp our feet about it because forget industry politics; when somebody encounters a moment of joy we have to be there with and for them. Leave everything else behind but there are so many people here who love what they do and who have shared that with you and earnestness and joy. And there is something about us that I want us to realise is that we can do this as a community. We're not leaving them behind. We're not leaving them behind. We're not leaving anybody behind. We're just saying that as a community, we choose to focus our attention and our gaze on one thing right now and we're not going to neglect anything else. Is that OK?
OK, I was gonna say a bunch more, but I don't want to anymore. What I'm going to do is I'm going to, I'm going to I'm going to break the script a little bit. And Tracy, thank you. I need you to come and stand beside me please mama. Because I like you that's why. When I did this, and when Tracy told me that I want this, I was on Zoom in my friend's house, and I cried a lot because I couldn't do - you cried too? (she says to Tracy). I couldn't be around anybody and it was scary and I honestly didn't expect to win anything. But we did. And thank you. And so this feels like a full circle moment for me and I hope you'll forgive me for taking up a little bit too much space. Because it just kind of feels significant.
So, guys, the winner of the RTE Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year in association with IMRO and IRMA - Imma say that again, in case you missed it, in association with IMRO and IRMA - for the album False Lankum is Lankum.
Ian Lynch’s acceptance speech as False Lankum was named album of the year
Thanks very much. We're very grateful to get this award but to be honest, it's really hard to see how we can celebrate it with an actual live genocide going on. To be honest, every day seems more and more hopeless than the one before it and we are trying to appeal to the consciences of people who may or may not have a conscience to begin with. There's a lot of despair out there. Maybe we can put enough pressure on the government to introduce some actual meaningful sanctions on Israel. They are master tacticians and if the pressure raises high enough, they're gonna have to do something about it. Otherwise, there's other ways to get things going. There's occupations, direct action, boycotts - go into the supermarket, find every Israeli product you can find, fuck it in the bin. It's a good start anyway because I think we all need to do exactly what we can because in the years to come, your grandkids are gonna be sitting on your lap and they're gonna go 'Nana, Granda, what did you do during the Palestine genocide?' And you are going to feel like an absolute prick if you can't tell them that you did everything in your power to stop this horrendous genocide. And we don't want you to feel like pricks, we want you to feel happy and we want the Palestinian people to be able to feel happiness. We want them to experience justice, equality, self determination, independence, and all those other basic human rights that apparently are afforded to everybody else in the world. So that's all we have to say. Thanks for the award. Free Palestine.
Watch the speech:
Pics of the acts who performed on the night
