The Louder Than Words team, in partnership with Northern Gravy, Louder Than War and Omnibus Pressare delighted to announce the winners of our 2025 Wilko Johnson Writing Award. The award celebrates the very best in music related writing from new and aspiring writers and we’re delighted to have recieved such high quality entries. Rounds of applause for all who entered – and special conratulations to our 3 winners: #1 Erin Braithwaite; #2 Han Lake and #3 Ceinwen Haydon.

The Wilko Johnson Writing Award 2024

The Question

Rock star Frank Zappa once said “Rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.”

Bearing in mind he named his children things like Moon Unit and Dweezil – and in an age of Tik Toks and 280-character Tweets – was Frank right… or does the music scene still need critics to make sense of the noise?

1st Place winner: Erin Braithwaite

Different Reasons

It’s December 2011. I am in my dad’s car on a journey that will end at the doors of Houghton House, a rehab facility in Johannesburg, South Africa. The car holds four people. The return trip will hold three.

The radio is on. I can see the white of my parents’ knuckles as they hold tight to one another over the handbrake. My sister is staring out of her window as I stare out of mine, like bookends to the tension. I’m holding a silent vigil with the radio presenter. Willing him to announce that “Shake It Out” by Florence and the Machine is next on his playlist.

(I am now thirteen years of therapy richer, so it’s hard to picture twenty-year-old me, absolutely desperate for this song to play now, at this moment. So that I could dedicate it to my mother in the front seat. So that I could manage to articulate a modicum of the emotion that was damming against the back of my teeth.)

We creep closer to our destination and my desperation grows. Throw me a bone here, Mr DJ. If that song doesn’t play in the next ten minutes I will never be able to tell my mother that this song is this moment. Written by an angel (because, let’s face it, Florence Welch is surely proof of the concept), written for Us.

The DJ does not cooperate. We walk into the rehab in silence. Intake forms. Explanations of visiting protocol, strong encouragement for us to attend the family sessions weekly (which, thank Florence Welch, we did). Then, the hugs goodbye. The see-you-soons. You-can-do-this; really a please-please-do-this.

And we get back into the car. I’m in the front seat now. My dad’s jaw is working. My sister is alone now in the back. And, as we reach the motorway, “Shake It Out” by Florence and the Machine.

I break open. I cry the whole way home, a lot longer than the 3.25 minute radio edit. Still unable to speak about what I’m feeling, but that song has broken the dam.

(Old habits die hard and my wall is still in place, I’m fighting a welling up against memory as I write this, but it’s lower now. I can stand on my tip-toes and peer over the top.)

I couldn’t care about what critics had to say about Florence’s anthem. Even if the song had zero critical acclaim, nothing would change the fact that it was able to facilitate the undoing of a lifetime of pain, and represent, for me at least, a divine moment of healing for my family.

A critic can’t dissect the intricacies that exist between a person and their favourite song. How do you critique emotion?

Dave Grohl said: “That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.”

The girl in that car in Johannesburg knew this, and I know it too.

2nd Place winner: Han Lake

Since childhood, I’ve had different interests wax and wane in intensity. There was the time I fancied myself an artist; the time my primary focus was on winning races or football matches; my baking obsession during lockdown; the list continues. Only two fascinations have remained fervent throughout my life, however, those being music and writing.

Of course, the music my parents had on their iPods provided the bedrock of my foray into the art form: Madness, ABBA, Daft Punk and co. injecting life into many a tedious car journey. Once I became old enough to navigate the Internet and streaming services, I found that the opportunities for musical discovery became boundless. Thus began a curiosity-fuelled excavation that saw my attention bounce, pinball-style, from rock to classical, country to hyperpop, to anything labelled ‘experimental.’ And there’s writing, which has been my primary form of self-expression for as long as I can remember,

Having underlined these fixations, I have to wonder why it took me up until late 2022 to combine them. I mean, there I was, encountering pioneer after pioneer, feeling moved by compositions to a degree I had never before experienced, and yet, still, I neglected to verbalise the way that chord sent a shiver down my spine, or how the way they sang that lyric left me in pieces.

To me, what Zappa is reflecting through his (typically provocative) comment is the view that rock journalism – and music journalism more broadly – is pointless. Why trawl the thesaurus in a desperate attempt to explain what is inexplicable? Why scramble to interpret songs when your conclusions are probably wholly inaccurate? Why run the risk of diluting something in trying to make sense of it?

These questions used to plague me. Now, I reject them.

What joy is joy unshared? Praise, unsung, criticism undivulged? Moreover, considering Geordie Greep’s description of music as ‘the most accessible art form, and the most mysterious’ in a recent interview, what harm could possibly come from someone who is passionate about music attempting to put into words the effect a song or record had on them? Yes, people will inevitably encounter disagreement in making their opinion of a piece of music known; this is particularly evident in the digital age in which we live. But it is this very discourse that encapsulates the beauty of music, in that a song can be despised by one person and adored by another.

Music journalism, at its core, exists to promote discussion, which I believe is essential for a music scene to thrive. I’m not sure it needs a purpose to justify its existence in the first place, though: to me, just the act of articulating what many may believe to be impossible or pointless to try to is enough of a reason for music journalism to continue. And if somebody – even just one person – feels compelled to experience a song or album for themselves after reading my ramblings about it?

That’s good enough for me.

3rd Place winner: Ceinwen Haydon

The Sisters of Mercy  

After Leonard Cohen

 

live in each leaf that turns

in autumn, each kiss on the brow

of the sick. They flourish in

brothels and backstreets. Gentle

pressure of fingers, skin on skin

is theirs. Their warmth chases away

ice-draughts from gods and their acolytes.

They embrace the abandoned, the decaying,

the lost and the hopeless; they love

all those whose sore and unwashed skin

taints the breeze. They brush aside

ashes of sulphur from lives lived in hell.

The Sisters of Mercy they are—

not departed or gone.