Watch ZM’s Cam Mansel and NZ Herald’s Sinead Corcoran as they chat to some of NZ’s biggest stars in music at the VNZMA 2019 red carpet. Video / Leon Menzies
It's New Zealand Music Awards night tonight, which can only mean one thing ... a welcome return to Izzy, TimeOut's resident fortune-telling feline.
Unlike her fellow animal psychic, Paul the Octopus, who rushed to fame off the back of a string of correct football World Cup predictions, Izzy's track recordon picking winners has proven somewhat more ... wrong.
Nevertheless, we stand blindly, perhaps foolhardily, behind all of her crystal ball-gazing predictions. We don't have much choice in the matter really; TimeOut's budget doesn't extend to buying an octopus.
Album of the Year If Izzy was feeling the heat from her dismal prophetic track record, she certainly wasn't showing it with this bold and controversial first call. Having gazed into her crystal ball - okay, not actually a crystal ball but rather a series of numbered ping-pong balls on a table - and right past Aldous Harding's acclaimed Designer, The Beths' spirited Future Me Hates Me and Avantdale Bowling Club's jazzy self-titled diary she instead picked Marlon Williams' Live at the Auckland Town Hall as winning here. A big call and one that's almost certainly incorrect seeing as the album is essentially a re-entry, double-dip of last year's award-winning Make Way for Love. Sorry Izzy (and Marlon) but this prediction is undoubtedly wrong.
Single of the Year After that horrendously wrong first prediction we began to think that perhaps bringing Izzy back to predict the Music Award winners may have been a bad idea ... What the heck do cats know about music anyway? "Oh ye of little faith!'" we cried to ourselves after receiving her forecast that Aldous Harding's giddily disorienting ditty The Barrel would win the Tūī here. This is a tough field but The Barrel stands alone as a work of singular genius so we predict that Izzy's prediction is bang on the money.
Best Solo Artist Another incredibly competitive category with arguments to be made in favour of each of the nominated four artists. It's a tough job trying to predict who will take home the glory, but its not our job so we left Izzy to toughen up and make the tough call. After acting all psychic for a second or two she confidently predicted that it will be Tom Scott's Avantdale Bowling Club rolling up to the winners podium tonight.
Best Group iIf you think herding cats is an impossible task try getting one to stay focused on predicting award winners ... ay caramba! By now Izzy was plainly tiring of chasing ping-pong balls around the table and barely consulted her star charts to predict that the mighty Beastwars would scare off all challengers to claim Best Group. Whether this was divine intervention, a desire to end this game or simply an affinity for her fellow beasts we don't know, but it seems a solid prediction and one we can certainly get behind.
* The New Zealand Music Awards will be broadcast live on THREE on Thursday, 14 November from 8.30pm.
