Brit Awards

Suffice to say, I didn’t watch this year’s ‘Brit Awards’. You might find this a little odd since I am always prattling about just how much I love my music and how much I love new music. And when the ‘Brit Awards’ come along, I can’t be bothered to watch. Explain, you may ask, this apparent contradiction? Well, here goes, in the form of the nominations for Best British Song:

Song of the Year

A1 & J1: Latest Trends

Adele: Easy On Me

Anne-Marie, KSI, Digital Farm Animals: Don’t Play

Becky Hill & David Guetta: Remember

Central Cee: Obsessed With You

Dave ft Stormzy: Clash

Ed Sheeran: Bad Habits

Elton John & Dua Lipa: Cold Heart (Pnau Mix)

Glass Animals: Heat Waves

Joel Corry, RAYE, David Guetta: BED

KSI: Holiday

Nathan Evans, 220Kid, Billen Ted: Wellerman

Riton x Nightcrawlers Ft Mufasa & Hypeman: Friday (Dopamine Re-Edit)

Tion Wayne & Russ Millions: Body

Tom Grennan: Little Bit Of Love

And the winner is……………

Let’s be honest: anyone who’s not dead will have worked out that Tottenham’s favourite crooner Ms Adkins was going to win the award with her tune Easy On Me from her album ‘My Life Is So Shit And I Got Divorced’. I knew that without really hearing the song. But then, I don’t know many of the other songs either. In fact, it is far quicker to point out the songs I do know, which are Dave’s Clash, Elton John and Dua Lipa’s brilliant Pnau remix Cold Heart and Glass Animals’ Heat Waves. Everything else, especially Ed Sheeran’s latest dirge, is not known to me. Why should it be?

The charts were once relevant to me and that was when I was young. Now I am old and the charts and most of the music that makes the charts is not aimed at fossils like me. I’m supposed to be the sort of person my grandfather was when he was appalled at The Rolling Stones. “That Tom Grennan,” I will complain. “No one will know who he is in 50 years”. Christ, I don’t even know who he is now.

For all that, I’m pleased that Geordie rocker Sam Fender and the brilliantly talented Little Simz won awards. Fender has broken through to the mainstream market not by selling out, as the purists might say, but by being hugely talented, in a way not dissimilar to Bruce Springsteen and Little Simz just makes great music.

On balance, I’m pleased the Brit Awards are still a thing, even though they are not a thing like they used to be. Music needs all the exposure on TV that it can get, even if events like this tend to promote the already stinking rich and famous. And it was only a few months ago I was telling anyone who would listen, and plenty who wouldn’t, that Glass Animals were a truly brilliant band.

Of all the nominations for this year, I bought just two of them, the aforementioned Glass Animals’ Dreamland record and Self Esteem’s stellar debut Prioritise Pleasure. if you want to cheer your ears, then I suggest you buy them too.