John Butler Presented With ARIA #1 Chart Award In Sydney

Left to right: Maia Toakley, Elfira Vania Suginawan, Mardi Caught, Michael Chase, John Butler, Phil Stevens, Valerie MacIver, Sebastian Chase

John Butler celebrated his latest ARIA Chart crown with an intimate performance Wednesday night at Sydney’s Metro Theatre, surrounded by his nearest and dearest.

The Western Australian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist landed at No. 3 on the all-genres ARIA Chart last Friday, September 12th, with PRISM, his fifth solo album.

That was the best position by a homegrown recording on the current frame, ensuring PRISM came in at No. 1 on the ARIA Top 20 Australian Albums tally — earning a piece of hardware from the national charts compiler.

Following his performance with Michael Barker (drums), Ian Peres (bass) and Michael Boase (percussion), Butler was presented with his latest ARIA #1 Chart Award by Sebastian Chase, founder of MGM Distribution.

Also watching on was his longtime manager Philip Stevens, publicist Valerie MacIver, the Annex team of Mardi Caught and Elfira Vania Suginawan, Kaos radio plugger Russell Thomas and MGM’s Michael Chase.

PRISM is Butler’s 10th studio release on Jarrah Records, with distribution by MGM.

To date, his highest charting solo albums were One Small Step (in 2007) and Still Searching (2024), both of which peaked at No. 23, ARIA reports.

As the leader of the John Butler Trio, the award-winning artist has nine ARIA Top 50 albums, including No. 1s with Sunrise Over Sea (in 2004), Grand National (2007), April Uprising (2010) and Home (2018).

PRISM is the third instalment in Butler’s sprawling “Four Seasons” rollout, a project six years in the making.

“PRISM just sent me on an odyssey, on a journey, that I didn’t realise I was on,” he tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ. All of its songs were created solo. “I was channeling Kevin Parker to see if I could do it all myself. That was fun,” he explains. “I learned a lot about honing my production skills.”

PRISM follows an album of meditations (Running River) and a fully instrumental LP (Still Searching). On the fourth in the series, he considers, “maybe it’ll be a live album in the studio or it’ll be more of a band kind of thing. But we’ll see.”

Butler’s national tour continues Thursday night, September 18th at The Station, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

Also this week, The Seed Fund, for which Butler is co-founder and director, announced its flagship Management Workshop Program would return in 2026.

Applications open this Friday, September 19th at theseedfund.org/management, and will close Friday, October 31st.