So, I don’t pretend to understand how a tiny and parochial village such as the Australian Music Industry works, but in my head I imagine that it must be a bit like the tiny and parochial village so toe-tappingly portrayed in 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof, and that behind the scenes there must be a Yente the Matchmaker organising everything. Some old and craggy-faced character who advises all the young women in the village what to do with their lives, because that's how I understand tiny and parochial villages are organised.

How else could Sarah Blasko, Lisa Mitchell and Kate Miller-Heidke have possibly agreed, of their own free will, to be involved in such a puzzling performance as they did on Thursday night? One in which their highly-trumpeted songwriting skills were carved up and forced to fit inside an inexplicable triptych based around the profoundly dumb concept that all three were women?

They all looked so dismembered on stage that we were left with a decidedly amputated feeling too, although bemusement swiftly took over and within seconds we had all shrugged our shoulders and gotten back to our normal lives and forgotten it had ever happened.

So, yes, I know it was just a blip and everyone has moved on now, but the whole thing has been puzzling me for days and I'm afraid that if I don't express all my opinions on the internet I feel like I don't really exist in the world. So here's what I'm talking about just in case you missed it:

As I was watching this highly-celebrated ‘magical moment’, my mind wandered to that other famous ‘magical moment’ that is also about women being forced into making ridiculous compromises and trading everything that is precious to them just for a vague chance to succeed in the society they live in, with the only difference being that it is set in Tsarist Russia in 1905 and not at Acer Arena in 2009:


When I used to watch Fiddler on the Roof as a kid I would ask my mum, ‘But why is Yente recommending for all those pretty girls to marry fat butchers—why can’t they just marry whoever they want?’

And my dear mama would say to me, ‘Because, my darling, those girls are living in a tiny and parochial village—they have no choices, they have no power or control over their own lives and so they have to just work within the limits of the society the best they can.’

‘Oh!’ I would exclaim. ‘So if you’re a woman existing in a tiny and parochial village, you just have to accept and be thankful for whatever you can get!’

‘That is right my darling girl,’ my mama would say, and then she would go back to slicing the penises off the men she had shanghaied and dragged back to our house as she was obviously a totally crazed man-hating femonazi which I have clearly become too, as evidenced by this totally outrageous question I am now about to ask:

Is this really the best that Sarah Blasko, Kate Miller-Heidke and Lisa Mitchell can get? Is this really the highest honour that Yente, or whoever the matchmaker responsible for organising the awards ceremony, can bring them? A half-assed performance slot on the ARIAs? Well, there were three of them, so it’s more like a third-assed performance slot on the ARIAs?

Maybe they were all genuinely thrilled just to be involved, so I am probably just imagining it when I read awkwardness and discomfort on their faces as they take their awkward and uncomfortable bows.

Am I also just imagining, then, that their performance seemed pretty much just incidental? A cobbled-together non sequitur tacked onto the end of the gushing, beautiful introductory speech made by presenter Missy Higgins, who unfairly seduced us into believing the Australian Recording Industry Association might actually be taking these ‘three very gifted women’ seriously?

‘When you find that musician who seems to tell your own story for you,’ Higgins enthused, ‘well there’s nothing really quite like it.’

The story they told for us unfortunately was our own and it was a really boring and stale one—that female musicians should just take whatever they can get, no matter how baffling, nonsensical, patronising and backed by a children’s choir it is. Okay, I take that back—the children’s choir was actually extremely moving and I enjoyed it very much; it reminded me of the Olympics. But the rest of the performance just made no sense whatsoever.

‘Why does the voice-over repeatedly insist on calling it a “magical moment?”’ my friend Scott asked. ‘Maybe fairies are going to fly out of their fannies?’ my other friend, Ben, suggested.

Alas, no fairies appeared, and when the numbness of the experience wore off we realized that the real magic actually occurred when these three presumably strong and independent artists were convinced that doing a performance like this was actually a better idea than waiting around calmly and confidently for a time somewhere in the glittering future when awards nights will be organised by people who aren’t complete patronising dicks.

Now, can we please cleanse our palates by watching Bjork and PJ Harvey perform together at 1994's Brit Awards. Because they look like they've actually spoken to each other before the show and might even want to be up there: