Hollywood’s about to hear something it hasn’t in a while—truth. Raw, ragged, aching, unapologetically personal truth, courtesy of two independent artists too stubborn to play by anybody’s rules. This year’s Hollywood Independent Music Awards (HIMA) just dropped its list of nominees, and MTS Records is flying the banner high with Pam Ross and Tim Tye (of Midnight Sky) standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the most fearless creators in the game. But don’t let the tuxedos fool you—these two are more grit than glitz, more verse than veneer.
Let’s talk Pam Ross first. Nominated in the Singer-Songwriter category, which is basically the MMA octagon for songwriters where only the emotionally disarmed survive, Ross didn’t get here by chasing fame or stroking trends. She bulldozed through the noise with a sound so genre-defiant she gave it its own name—PamMusic. A little country, a little rock, a lot of heart, and not a drop of pretension.
She writes like Springsteen if he swapped his factory shifts for Texas dive bars. Songs like “Fire in the Hole” and “Falling Off of the Merry Go Round” are dispatches from the battlefield of the self—bloody, bruised, and better for it. You don’t just listen to Pam Ross. You live a few of your own mistakes through her and maybe come out the other side a little wiser. Or at least a little drunker.
Her HIMA nod is less a coronation and more a cosmic “hell yeah” from a universe tired of slick, sugarcoated songwriting. In a world of algorithm-choked playlists and TikTok hooks built for fifteen seconds of fame, Ross is a throwback to when music meant bleeding for it. And when she takes the Avalon stage in Hollywood, you can bet she won’t be lip-syncing. She’ll be testifying.
Now, on to Tim Tye, the Ohio lawyer-turned-lyricist behind Midnight Sky, whose nomination in the Lyrics/Lyricist category for “A Few Good Years” feels like a backhand to every radio programmer who told him to stick to safe rhymes and three chords. Tye doesn’t write songs. He writes postcards from the twilight of the American dream. And this one? It’s about savoring the time we’ve got left, however little or much that might be.
The man isn’t chasing Top 40 stardom. He’s chasing the echo of something honest, something lived-in. “A Few Good Years” reads like Kerouac if he picked up a guitar instead of a typewriter. It’s not trying to be poetic. It just is. It’s the kind of song that makes you pull over on the interstate and cry because you finally realize you’re not 25 anymore, and that’s okay.
Ross and Tye aren’t just nominees. They’re outliers. They’re proof that independent doesn’t mean amateur—it means unfiltered. MTS Records, the indie label that’s been dragging real music out of the underground like a coal miner with a broken lamp, deserves a nod too for believing in artists who’ve got more miles on their hearts than hashtags on their posts.
In a year where the industry still seems allergic to sincerity, these two offer a vaccine. They don’t need your validation, and they sure as hell don’t need your Auto-Tune. What they need is a room with ears and a heart still open to hearing something that isn’t pre-packaged and polished into pop oblivion.
So here’s to Pam Ross and Tim Tye—two song-slingers walking barefoot through a forest of sonic fakes, lighting matches with every chord. If the HIMAs have any soul left, they’ll give these artists more than nominations. They’ll give them the spotlight, then get the hell out of the way.
Because this isn’t just music. It’s survival set to melody. And in the hands of people like Ross and Tye, survival sounds darn good.