Tinie Tempah as Linda Perry wins 2026 Ivor Novello award

tinie tempah and Linda Perry was one of the clearest AI statements to come out of the 2026 Ivor Novello Awards: she said songwriters need to embrace artificial intelligence after taking the special international award at London’s Grosvenor Hotel.

The 61-year-old received the honour for the impact her career has had on the British music industry. She wrote hits including Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful, Pink’s Get The Party Started and Gwen Stefani’s What You Waiting For?, giving her comments immediate weight inside a ceremony built around songwriting and composing.

Grosvenor Hotel award

The Ivors Academy’s peer-judged ceremony presented the special international award, and James Blunt handed it over. Perry and Blunt have a direct professional link: she signed him to her Custard Records label in the 2000s, which made his role on stage feel less like a random cameo and more like an industry nod across two eras of pop writing.

Perry told the Press Association that AI is not an ending but another tool. “To me, it’s just another tool that has shown up to make people’s life easier in some way.” She followed that with a microwave comparison, saying people once treated new kitchen technology as the end of dinner-making and that the reaction to AI now feels similarly overblown.

Blunt on AI

Blunt used the presentation to make the case in blunter business terms. “It’s weird how people are so nervous about it because actually the music business has shifted and changed so often, just something to embrace.” He also said AI could sing in his voice if he could not hit the high notes, and could handle backing vocals if his band were “all rubbish” and the cheaper option was the better one.

That is the friction point here: Perry’s warning was not just about convenience, but about control. She said running from the future means running from solution, and argued that moving toward AI helps songwriters understand it and leaves fewer opportunities for “all the bad guys” to manipulate the system alone. For writers, the practical takeaway is simple — AI is already part of the conversation, and the people shaping songs now are starting to talk about it in public as a tool rather than a threat.

Writing the future

For songwriters watching the industry, Perry’s speech matters because it came from a writer with a proven track record and from a ceremony designed to reward composition itself. The message was not that AI should replace craft; it was that the people making the music need to learn how it works before the rest of the system does. That is the argument likely to shape the next round of studio conversations, whether writers like the answer or not.