Explaining Ayesha Omar’s win

Letter July 08, 2013
I would like to quote the views of a jury member at the Lux Style Awards, who tried to explain Ayesha Omar winning.

LAHORE: This is with reference to my article of July 6 “How could Ayesha Omar win at the LSAs?” As a follow-up to the piece, I would like to quote the views of a jury member at the Lux Style Awards, who tried to explain Ayesha Omar winning the Album of the Year award:

“The jury vote has around 30 per cent weightage in deciding who gets the award. We were all keen to nominate Ayesha in the absence of good albums that year and also because the album has a few good songs and a lot of work has gone into its production, unlike the other albums that often sounded half-baked. Sajid and Zeeshan and Sajjad Ali were rated higher by the jury in all probability but let’s not forget that the public’s votes can make all the difference at the end of the day. People do not vote for excellence; they generally tend to vote for whoever they know and love for one reason or the other, as we saw at the elections. We were surprised to hear the judgment but not shocked, for the public was not going to vote for, say someone like Usman Riaz, simply because it does not know him as well, thanks to the death of our music channels and the industry at large.”

Mohammad A Qayyum

Published in The Express Tribune, July 9th, 2013.

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