Musicians apparently allowed to vote alongside record company executives and industry figures for the first time
This year, we are reliably informed, the Brits seeks to reposition itself. After years of selling itself to the public largely on the unscripted incidents of the past ? Jarvis Cocker's stage invasion, John Prescott's dousing and so on ? while rather disingenuously doing everything in their power to ensure nothing of that kind ever happened again, the BPI is playing the "all about the music" card. Musicians were apparently permitted to vote alongside the record company executives and industry figures for the first time. The lifetime achievement award has gone, the better to focus attention on the best album gong. In fairness, the sense that they were running out of people to give the lifetime award to has been hanging around ever since they used it to honour the musical, rather than philanthropic, achievements of Bob Geldof.
This year a certain worthiness has definitely crept into the winners' enclosure. Manufactured pop has been given the elbow, with only Justin Bieber flying the flag for weenybop. Winsome singer-songwriter Laura Marling unexpectedly triumphed over Cheryl Cole, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs was declared a better album than Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, the pop-rap of Tinie Tempah's Pass Out beats the massed ranks of Cowell-assisted stars to best single. On one hand, you can't argue with a lot of the choices, particularly if you take into account what else was nominated. Pass Out is a great single. Plan B is a fantastic pop star. You don't have to love Arcade Fire to admit that theirs is a better album than Katy Perry's, which surely counts as praise of the faintest stripe imaginable. On the other, it's hard not to be struck by the sense of an event straining for a credibility it will never achieve. You can't imagine music press delight at the best album award going to cosy acoustic band Mumford & Sons, whose leader, Marcus Mumford, was witheringly nailed by writer David Quantick as "the Michael McIntyre of folk".
And of course, there's an argument that, at least for the people who tune in to watch it on ITV, the Brits is no more "all about the music" than it is all about animal husbandry: what they essentially want is a live-action version of You've Been Framed, interspersed with Rihanna or similar singing in her knickers, some fireworks and a quick shufti to see if (a) Robbie is still talking to the rest of Take That and (b) Jordan and Peter Andre have come to blows. Thus it is that the most prominent sound at the Brits isn't winsome indie-folk or homegrown pop-rap, but the thud of an event falling between two stools.
Adrianne Palicki Amanda Righetti Michelle Branch Melissa Howard Samantha Mumba
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