Music award show are meaningless. You know that, I know that, even Adele knows that and she’s won at least five gold book-ends at every single one. Earlier this month the Grammys happened and yes they featured Kanye West pretending to almost do something mildly controversial, but they also – and this is very important – featured Jessie J and Tom Jones SINGING AT THE SAME TIME ON THE SAME STAGE. It also went on for what felt like seven weeks. In comparison to the Grammy’s stuffy, lets-all-sit-in-rows-stone-cold-sober fun vacuum, the Brits – which takes place at the joyfully atmosphere-free O2 in London today, and features gallons of wine – feels like a midweek night down your local. Obviously in the age of social media, it’s important that we all have lofty opinions on it all, but essentially the Brits should be celebrated for what it is, ie a brilliant excuse to watch some of the biggest pop stars on the planet (and Paloma Faith) sing one song (or a medley if their album’s sold over a million copies), then point at the screen in bewilderment when someone from a soap comes on to present Best International Female, and then play drinking games involving the word ‘authentic’.
The Brits, let me remind you, isn’t the Mercury Music Prize (although FKA Twigs is nominated for British Female Solo Artist). It’s not there to let you know about difficult new music that sells just less than diddly squat (although FKA †wigs is nominated for British Female Solo Artist). The whole point is to celebrate the albums and songs that have sold shitloads of copies and will help keep the British music industry afloat. Then, once the show is over and the tabloids are full of all the winners, those same artists receive a huge spike in sales and so the industry keeps on turning. That’s just the way it goes – you either accept it, enjoy it, be snide about it on Twitter but still watch it and secretly enjoy it or, you know, do something else.
The Brits isn't the Mercury Music Prize. It’s not there to let you know about difficult new music that sells just less than diddly squat
Also, and this is the key to its success, the Brits know that while people like listening to Sam Smith, George Ezra and Ed Sheeran albums, they also want to see proper pop stars from America do their thing too. So in among something called Royal Blood, the actual Madonna will sing a song, the first time she’s popped down to the Brits since 2006, while the biggest pop star on the planet, ie Taylor Swift, will hopefully be performing all of *1989. *Oh yeah, and Kanye’s just confirmed that he’ll be performing. Meanwhile, there’s usually space for a special guest or two (imagine if Beyoncé shows up and recreates the entire 7/11 video using hosts Ant & Dec as tiny props).
So, while the ceremony has drifted away from its vaguely reckless reputation in the ’90s – Blur vs Oasis, someone chucking a bucket of water over someone else, Jarvis Cocker waggling his tiny bum at a white-clad, Jesus-aping Michael Jackson – amusing things still happen, and sometimes amusing things happening is all we deserve on a cold Wednesday night in February. So we’ve had James Corden cutting off Adele’s Best Album acceptance speech in 2012, a year after she silenced 20,000 drunk people like a broken-hearted angel; Nadine Girls Aloud getting stranded in LA in 2008 after she ‘lost her passport’; Joss Stone turning up American that time; Noel Gallagher getting into a war of words with boy band A1; Geri Halliwell emerging from a massive vagina in 2000; Alex Turner being a sanctimonious, but entertaining, dickhead in 2014; Peter Kay correctly calling Liam Gallagher a knobhead in 2010 and Robbie Williams winning 17 awards in total throughout his career. SEVENTEEN!
If you can still muster the strength to get annoyed by a two hour entertainment programme that's awarded Robbie Williams twelve more times than Phil Collins, then good luck to you.
If you can still muster the strength to get annoyed by a two hour entertainment programme that’s awarded Robbie Williams 11 more times than Michael Jackson, thirteen more times than Elton John and – this is the one that hurts – 12 more times than Phil Collins, then good luck to you. Like most pop extravaganzas, it’s a gloriously over-hyped, intermittently entertaining spectacle that works better when you’re drunk and when you don’t take it entirely seriously. Plus, if it vanishes we’ll be left with just the Grammys, or worse, the BBC Music Awards. Seriously, no one wants that.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.