AND AWAY THEY WENT

There’s a circularity about Annie Crummer, Dianne Swann, Margaret Urlich, Kim Willoughby and Debbie Harwood being inducted as legacy artists at this year’s Aotearoa Music Awards.

In the late 80s, as When the Cat’s Away, they enjoyed hits, tours, music awards, a best-selling live album and an award-winning documentary

But as Urlich told the Listener in January 1990, “There was life before Cat’s Away, there’s life during Cat’s Away and there’ll be life after Cat’s Away.”

And it’s for their diverse individual careers – before and after Cat’s Away – that these five remarkable women are being celebrated.

Four of them came together at the 1985 music awards for a Listener article on women in rock: Swann – the singer/songwriter in Everything That Flies – had been nominated for Most Promising Female Vocalist (the band for Most Promising Group), a category won by Harwood; Crummer’s soulful voice elevated Netherworld Dancing Toys’ For Today, which won Single of the Year (and also featured Harwood); Urlich of Peking Man won Best Female Vocalist.

Here were distinct talents, which, with Willoughby, would become When the Cat’s Away – girls just wanting to have fun as sisters doing it for themselves.

They won Entertainer of the