The Brit Awards

A while has passed since The Brits came to Manchester, but hindsight might be the best place to reflect, after a lacklustre 2 million viewing figures on ITV. Then again, could you imagine the audience of Corrie tuning in to Rosalia doing Berghain? 

Olivia Dean (quite rightly) took away four awards, including best song for “Rein Me In” with Sam Fender. Just like with RAYE or Harry Styles in previous years, some have criticised the lack of variety that comes with a clean sweep. Would you expect anything else from a major award ceremony? 

Following the rather unfortunate events of BAFTA night, the beeper guys were clearly getting nervous, especially when Sean and Bez from Happy Mondays were around. Geese picked up the International Group award, well deserved after the year they have had, and Cameron Winter got censored to the hilt. 

THE PERFORMANCES 

Maybe we witnessed the best Brits opening performance ever, with Harry Styles’s rousing performance of Aperture? Performance wise, actually, this was the best year in memory. Olivia Dean did “Man I Need” and RAYE performed a weird mash-up of “Where is my husband” and newer single “Nightingale Lane”, but they are two of the pop artists who deserve all the hype they get, truly pushing the boundaries. Wolf Alice curated an amazing version of “The Sofa”, with dancers crawling out of the actual sofa. Sombr confused everybody with his slightly tonally deaf security guard stunt, but since everybody knows “12 to 12” and “Homewrecker” by now, it was nice for him to introduce “Back to Friends” and “Undressed” to a wider audience. The K-Pop Demon Hunters probably proved they should stick to singing in animation with a lot of ADR, but the kids adored their performance of “Golden” and that might be all that matters. Mark Ronson also dedicated his performance, having taken away the Lifetime Achievement award, to the late and great Amy Winehouse. Dua Lipa and GhostFace Killah made astonishing cameos, evidencing quite how vast Ronson’s CV really is. 

A FEW MORE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW 

Noel Gallagher won the Songwriter of the Year award which was a rather strange move considering that he wrote no songs in the last twelve months and there are so many great songwriters out there. Plus, everybody knows Noel is great. Did he really need more? 

The concert movie is making a huge comeback, with AURORA, Bring Me The Horizon and Twenty One Pilots bringing their sets to big screens in the last month. Harry Styles’ Netflix show was a fascinating experiment, following up from his Aperture live debut at the Brits, strangely inspired by LCD Soundsystem. 

Arguably the strangest category is “Alternative and Rock Act”, which Sam Fender won following his Mercury Prize winning album “People Watching”. Yes, it was brilliant, but alternative it was not. He went up against the likes of Blood Orange, Lola Young, Wet Leg and Wolf Alice. 

Some of the awards were not hosted on the night, and announced in advance, including Jacob Alon’s critic choice award. A very, very worthy win. Meanwhile, Dave took away hip hop and grime act, duh, and Fred Again won Dance Act with Skepta and PlaqueBoyMax .

Pop music is in a very healthy place, with the nominees for best song and international song featuring some inevitably all time classics, Die With A Smile, Pink Pony Club, Messy, among others. Well, “APT” won International and “Rein Me In” won best song.