I had to jump on the band wagon (no pun intended) eventually and give my view on Wednesday night's Brit Awards ceremony. Now let me first of all issue a disclaimer: I am a self-confessed music obsessive (possibly bordering on music snob) and there are few subjects that I'm more passionate about. With that said whilst I am a rock chick at heart and always will be I do have a fairly broad musical taste that covers Pop, Dance and even some classical too, mixed in with the occasional rap tune. I have to admit I didn't have high hopes for my enjoyment of the show when I read through the lists of nominees and didn't recognise half of them! I must also confess that I didn't watch the entire ceremony and came in around 9pm (after a most exciting episode of Waterloo Road but that's an entirely different story) but I use the assumption that nothing spectacular happened during the first hour of the show.
I was going to avoid watching the show on principle as I knew that it would be fixed for One Direction to win at least one award. Now let me make it clear I'm sure they are lovely guys who can sing else they would never have gotten through to be made into a group on the X-Factor. But my god does it wind me up the way in which Simon Cowell has pretty much bought them all their success. Bear in mind this is a group who only came third on a show voted for by the public. However since then the Cowell machine has gone into overdrive, paying the media to give them numerous column inches, magazine covers, declaring them to be the "biggest band in the world" before their first album was even out! At last year's show an award was created especially for them celebrating their "worldwide success", I'm sorry but why wasn't an award like this available before?
The Spice Girls were just as big, if not bigger, with far more of a cultural impact but, conveniently, they weren't managed by Simon Cowell. In fact, fact fans, Mr Cowell tuned down the opportunity to sign the Spice Girls! He tried to create a rival group in the late 90s called Girl Thing who spectacularly bombed. Girl Thing are currently appearing on ITV's Big Reunion and recounted their story of a publicity machine that engineered magazine covers, a series on GMTV showcasing them on their 'tour' signing autographs for their '100s of fans', is this starting to sound familiar? I just feel that bands and artists should have to earn such coverage, maybe it's my rock & indie background, but I think you need to prove you're worth the hype.
But returning to my original point, I remember 90s Brit Awards that were always guaranteed to have bad behaviour, excess and general stupidity but it was so much fun! The first Brit Awards I remember watching was around 95/96 when Jarvis Cocker invaded the stage during Michael Jackson's performance setting the precedent for years to come. Who can forget Chumbawumba throwing the bucket of ice water over John Prescott? Or Robbie Williams inviting the Gallagher brothers to have a fight live on TV. The hilarious appearance of DJ Brandon Block trying to hijack Ronnie Wood presenting an award. Then there is the obvious classic of Geri Halliwell's Union Jack dress, regularly voted one of the most iconic dresses ofall time! Us Brits really used to know how to throw a party! I think the most 'Rock N Roll' part of this years ceremony was James Cordon & Nick Grimshaw's highly staged "snog".
Over the last decade the Brits have gotten, well, boring. The first nail in the coffin was the year that the organisers banned alcohol (early 00's I believe). They wanted to appeal to audiences across the world, namely America and thought that boozed up bands wouldn't be well received. It's been down hill ever since. The thing that frustrates me is that America has plenty of it's own awards shows – The Grammys, The VMAs to name but a couple. If they want formal, well-behaved artists thanking everyone at the record label then they can watch those shows but please let us have our awards back in all their former glory! The UK invented Rock n Roll for gods sake and exported it to America. We've also been behind a large percentage of the most exciting musical innovations over the decades – Hard Rock, Punk, Metal, Dance/Rave. America has an amazing musical heritage, don't get me wrong (my favourite band are American so it would be hypocritical of me to say anything bad about their music scene!) they bought us New Wave, Rap, Thrash/Speed Metal, Motown & Grunge.
But please, please, please let us do music awards in our own, often clumsy, sometimes cringeworthy, occasionally brilliant, but uniquely British way!
Love Jen
XxxX
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