Marty Bandier had a pretty good weekend. On Saturday night, as you probably know, the Sony/ATV kingpin and Lord of All Publishing received the NARAS President’s Merit Award from his lifelong pal Neil Portnow at Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy party. He used the occasion not only to reminisce poignantly about the importance of songs and songwriters in his life, but to speak out with force on protecting the rights and livelihoods of all tunesmiths.

The following evening, his writer Sam Smith pretty much owned Grammy night, while Pharrell Williams and Miranda Lambert, also jewels in his massive crown, picked up big genre wins. That’s hardly the extent of Sony/ATV’s trophy haul.

Meanwhile, all five nominees for Song of the Year had some Bandier affiliation.

Anyway, this here column frequently extols the virtues of young lions in the pub game, but it’s worth pointing out that they all travel paths forged by the Alpha Lion. He redefined what a publisher could do, particularly with respect to exploiting catalogue. Now’s he’s developing new ways for pubcos to monetize and protect their songs in the digital era.

We should also reiterate that Marty is bringing in the widely admired Rick Krim to take on co-prexy duties on the West Coast, starting in March; more about that here.

She may not have taken home the SOTY prize, but Sia killed in her “Chandelier” Grammy performance and it paid off in growing album sales for this beloved and respected (if camera-shy) figure in the songwriting community. She has surely crossed the threshold, now, from quirky artist with a Pop hit to major (album) artist. Oh, and she’s also one of Marty’s.

The same trajectory can be observed with Hozier—yep, another Sony/ATV writer—whose “Take Me to Church” has been blowing up forever. While it didn’t earn SOTY either, his performance on the show (with guest Annie Lennox) has helped him graduate to album seller. And what an album (which he penned himself, with the exception of one co-write). We witnessed his L.A. show last week, and our ears still hurt from the screaming of his throng of female fans, who knew every single lyric.

We asked a handful of publishing execs to guess which nominee would take the Song of the Year trophy, and the winning predictions came from UMPG prexy North America Evan Lamberg and BMG Chrysalis North America Chief Creative Officer Zach Katz, who both called it for Sam.

Evan numbers “Stay With Me” co-writer James Napier (aka Jimmy Napes, seen at left with Lamberg and Capitol U.K. chief Nick Raphael) as one of his writers, but that doesn’t make him any less right. Congrats to you both; you can collect your gift bags at the—oh, damn. We’re out of gift bags.

Hit us up: Simon.Glickman@hitsmagazine.com; Samantha.Hissong@hitsmagazine.com.