European Border Breakers Music Awards 2015: The Common Linnets win public choice award

The winners of the 2015 European Border Breakers Awards (the ‘EBBA’), highlighting the best new rock and pop musicians and bands in Europe who have achieved cross-border chart success, were honoured this evening at the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival in the Dutch city of Groningen. The competition is organised under the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.

The Common Linnets came out as the big winner of the evening taking away the ‘Public Choice Award’ by an overwhelming amount of online voters. The Dutch group, who performed live at the show, released their debut album ‘The Common Linnets’ last November. Since then the album has received the title ‘Album of the Year’ on iTunes, the Golden status in Germany and Austria and reached the highest sales in 2014 in the Netherlands.

The Common Linnets: ‘We crossed musical borders making the music, and now to be recognized for crossing international borders is very satisfying….The EBBA means that the record has its own legs now, and the group has its own legs now, instead of thriving on that second place at Eurovision. It has its own life.”

The ceremony also included the first EBBA Best Festival Act Award. This new category is decided upon by the majority of the 90 festivals within the European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP) and given to the best performing band or artist at these festivals, which include famous names like Glastonbury, Exit or Sziget.

The first EBBA prize for Best Festival Act was handed to the British band Jungle, who unfortunately could not be present but acknowledged their win by saying: “Eurosonic was our first festival and proved to be a great experience. It gave us a platform to showcase our live show to a European audience and festivals… And now we are thrilled to have won the Best Festival Act Award”

The EBBA show also featured outstanding performances by other 2015 winners: Melanie de Biasio (BE), MØ (DK) and Indila (FR) as well as former winner the Ting Tings (UK). The other 2015 EBBA winners – Klangkarussel (AT), Milky Chance (DE), Hozier (IE), Todd Terje (NO), Tove Lo (SE) and John Newman (UK) – could not perform at the show but streamed live messages.