1-2-3-4... 5 Junos for Feist!

And, from the perspective of this songwriter, all well-deserved and earned, especially the Juno for Songwriter of the Year! You can read about the accomplishment here on JAM! Music, but I thought I'd include a few quotes from Feist to mark the occasion:

"I wrote a whole bunch of stuff down on my arm," Feist said as she took the stage to accept the first trophy of the night, for best single. "Should I try to chip through it?" she asked, going on to thank a slew of friends and bandmates.

"What I really meant to say before is I'm so grateful, I'm very, very grateful," said Feist, who got teary during her second trip to the podium after embracing her mother in their seats. "And I meant to say thank you, I forgot to say that before, and then the nylon-string guitar came in and cut me off. It was terrible."

But the night belonged to 32-year-old Feist, a delicate-voiced crooner born in Amherst, N.S., who started out shouting with a Calgary punk band as a teen. She later became known as an indie-rock poster girl with Toronto bands By Divine Right and Broken Social Scene, then as a Parisian ex-pat with sultry jazz leanings that earned her a best new artist Juno in 2005.

But it was an iPod TV commercial - featuring her song "1 2 3 4" and an accompanying video - that catapulted her to mainstream success last year. Record sales soon followed and her eclectic disc "The Reminder" garnered four Grammy nominations in February and a Brit Award nomination for best international female.

Feist, who has managed to achieve a rare combination of mainstream appeal and street cred, boasted Saturday that the pinnacle of her newfound fame has been an appearance on the children's show "Sesame Street."

Backstage on Sunday, she noted that for the children's show, "1 2 3 4" was retooled to be followed by the lyric: "Monsters crawling across the floor."

"They rewrote the lyrics and it was so cathartic," explained Feist, who was accompanied to the ceremony by her mother and her father, brother and sister from Toronto.

"I've sung that song so many times on TV but never with furry creatures peering up at me and chickens in bikinis. It was everything you've ever dreamed of about the Muppets."

Hmmm, maybe I can work "furry creatures" or "chickens in bikinis" into a song... Muppets, hold production! I'm working on it...

Kudos and congratulations to Feist, who has proven once again that the Muse is with her...