“During the recording session,” Parker told APRA AMCOS staff, “I was working myself up to tell him I was going to take it back.”
There were no bad feelings from Ronson. The Brit Award-winning producer bestowed the songwriter of the year award to Parker during the annual APRA Awards, via video link.
“You think of ‘The Less I Know the Better,’” Ronson explained during his speech, “it’s one of the most iconic basslines of the past 20 years.”
Parker wrote, recorded, produced and mixed the song, which appeared on the Grammy-nominated album Currents and went to No. 1 on the triple j station’s Hottest 100 listener’s poll for decade. Currents went to No. 1 in Australia, and Top 5 on both side of the Atlantic.
Today, the song is four-times platinum certified in Australia, double-platinum in the U.S. and platinum in the U.K.
The 1,000,000,000 List acknowledges streaming numbers from all major services including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, YouTube Music, Vevo and Amazon, and it’s said to be the first award of its kind to recognize a songwriter’s achievement.
Previous recipients include Dean Lewis and Jon Hume (for “Be Alright”), Flume (for “Never Be Like You”), Starley and P-Money (for “Call On Me”), Vance Joy (for “Riptide”), Gotye (for “Somebody That I Used to Know”), and Vassy (for “Bad”). See the full list here.