Oh, those crazy BRIT Awards. A messy, incoherent mess and an incestuous celebration of mediocrity. I mean…when the nominations are largely poor, you can’t expect the winners to be much better.
After a more than decent opening performance from Arctic Monkeys (who I’m not the biggest fan of, but hats off to them), the dreaded words that have been spoken for the last few years came booming through the TV set. Nine words to fill you with a sense of dread; “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host, James Corden”.
Noooooooooooo!
They might as well have just replaced the announcement with some ominous organ music, signalling trouble ahead. He started off badly and grew progressively worse. Even the sycophantic audience seemed to think he was shit. Several people said “let’s have a round of applause for James Corden”, only to hear a pin drop somewhere off into the distance of the O2 Arena. He started off by coming on stage with his sleeve on fire. OH, I GET IT! Because Arctic Monkeys had pyro! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA! No. He continued making bad jokes (“It’s Bastille and Rudimental…it’s Basti-mental!” Boooooo!) and awkward interviews (to One Direction: “So, do you have any advice for Justin Bieber in jail?” to Kylie Minouge: “which of these men do you want to make out with?”). It was painful, and it makes you wonder why they keep asking him back. Because he’s cheap and available? Because he’s not funny. And he tries too hard. Basically what I’m saying is; he’s a fat prick and I don’t like him.
As far as performances go…Katy Perry was weird. The performance looked like it should have been for a more up-tempo song, being as colourful as it was, but it was also weirdly low key. It was pretty forgetful. In fact, I did completely forget about it until Corden reminded me later on when Perry presented an award. Note: if I have to be told that I was blown away by her performance earlier, I probably wasn’t. Perry is a weird animal; in the last five years, she has slowly gone from guilty pleasure with fun pop ditties to full-on embarrassing irritant.
Bruno Mars is another weird one. As I’ve said elsewhere here; I KNOW he is talented. I’ve seen him be talented. But, all too often, he’s just shit. Gorilla? The FUCKING Lazy Song? Yeesh! Luckily, he did the best song he’ll ever write last night, the 70s Philly soul rave-up Treasure, so he had a good night (although, there’s no way his band listen to Black Flag, despite what their t-shirts may have said).
I thought the irony of Lorde performing Royals and winning Best International Female was somewhat ironic, given that the song is a criticism of nearly everybody in the arena at the time. Performance was OK, though. Still a bit “meh”.
Ellie Goulding probably did my favourite performance of the night. I mean, technically it was awful, but some of the drummers fell over at the front of the stage in a heap of calamity, and hilarity ensued (I hit rewind several times, highlight of the night).
Take a peek at 2.36
Then there’s the awards themselves.
The weird thing about the BRITS is that they want to seem credible but it’s on ITV (very much the station for idiots), so they can’t be as credible as they want to be. So, to keep the idiotic twittersphere happy, they seem to create awards for the shit bands that they actually have some stake in.
For example, the “Global Success Award”? They can’t give the Best British Group Award to One Direction, that would undermine the credibility they think they have…so they just invent an award to give to the pricks. The Best Video Award…ensure One Direction get up on stage twice by having the results voted for on Twitter, where One Direction fans live. It’s really quite fucking transparent. Who’d have thunk…ITV, who were partially responsible for One Direction flooding them with awards, eh?
Speaking of One Direction, did anyone else think it was weird when their rendition of One Way Or Another (Teenage Kicks) was nominated for Single of the Year? It’s a fucking cover version. Now, I’ll admit on paper, it is the best SONG that was nominated. But not that version. A cover version should NOT be nominated for any kind of Best Song-esque categories.
A few other little things; Prince was cool as ever…just a shame that twat Corden interrupted him to take a selfie with him. Although, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have one the same.
Would Tom Oddell have been nominated for so much had he not won the Critic’s Choice last year? It’s not like he’s made an impact since then.
It was nice that, for once, no-one from the BRIT School seemed to win.
If Janelle Monae is nominated for Best International Female, she best fucking win it. She is miles ahead of the rest of them.
By not showing up, David Bowie gained 50 billion dignity points.
Why do they no longer give out the Outstanding Achievement Award? I don't get it. There's plenty of British internationally recognised legends and pioneers who have never won it; Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin...and yet they give it to Wham!, Duran Duran and the Spice Girls and then just don't bother to give it out anymore? Fuck you.
The awards are so incestuous. They really, really are. You have to be in a certain crowd to even be considered. You look at someone like, say...Frank Turner. He reaches #2 in the charts (higher than some of those nominated) and plays arena tours, and he doesn't even get a look in? Could it be because he did it without you lot? Maybe. I imagine he - and people like him - don't much care, but the idea that people of that ilk are being just completely overlooked at such big events does irk me.
Alex Turner did the best speech of the night.
In conclusion...the whole thing is at once a complete joke and boring as fuck. Way too slick and lifeless. Live TV with a bunch of boozed up rock stars should be dangerous and teetering on the edge. The days of Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood may have been embarrassing, but at least it was memorable. I say bring them back for an encore...
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