And that's it from us
The pizza has congealed, our sanctioned amount of cans is empty and pop has truly been picked over. Until next year, good night!
And my pandemic encounter with Kylie.
And a nice interview with Bring Me the Horizon by Ben…
For anyone catching up on the night’s non-Raye winners, here’s a great essay by Shaad D’Souza on the source of SZA’s success.
The full list of winners
Here’s the night in pictures.
As long as our previously established Horlicks drinking game hasn’t already put you to sleep, we have reached the end of a very safe evening, extremely short on anything political even by the Brits’ standards. No firebrand performances, no references to Israel and Palestine; just one stand for trans rights, one for the sub-postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal and one for the rights of songwriters. It’s not that you go to primetime shiny-floor ITV awards shows for biting commentary, but … there was a lot of unclaimed potential there. Maybe some of the nominees who lost out to Raye’s – very deserved – wins had something up their festive sleeves. We’ll never know.
Kylie Minogue's performance reviewed
Having not had a hit of any substance since 2010, in recent years Kylie made genre forays into country and disco along with a Christmas album, and it looked like she was pootling off into cosy Radio 2 land. But she swerved decisively back to pop with Padam Padam: malevolently sexy and powered by firmly up-to-date programming, it sent a wriggle of pleasure through summer 2023, although people saying “Padam?” as a question got old after about five minutes.
There’s a whisper of Spinning Around as a portentous fanfare builds like the score to a particularly depressing Christopher Nolan film – but then we’re into Padam Padam, with Kylie appearing atop a lofty plinth, that bit of staging long beloved by X Factor, Eurovision and more. She channels the same endearing everywoman energy she had on stage at that epic Glasto performance, clearly enjoying herself and – unlike Robbie Williams unforgivably didn’t do in this slot a few years ago – just gives us hit after hit. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head begets a bit of Slow and then Love At First Sight – which squeezes even more dancefloor euphoria than Calvin & Ellie and Chase & Status managed. She keeps the dopamine pumping by finishing with All the Lovers, jumping around for the drop like a kid who’s double-dropped fistfuls of Haribo. It’s a wonderfully unguarded and joyous ending, matching Raye’s jubiliation at her historic wins.
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Global icon: Kylie Minogue
Padam padam indeed! Our de facto national treasure (borrowed from Australia) acknowledges her lifetime in pop and the people who have buoyed her along the way:
“Alright I’m just gonna be sobbing with Raye. Raye, you did that! You did that. Brits, thank you so much. I really tried to think hard about what to say tonight but I knew I couldn’t plan anything and I knew it’d be just about the emotion. For some of you it’s been a lifetime – 36 years and counting of experiences together and the thing that really gets me is the love of music and connection with people … I have friends in this room that I’ve worked with through the years. My team now, thank you so much. There’s a part of me that’s still the 14-year-old girl in her room dreaming of making it in this industry and I met some of the Brits students before and I feel your promise … here I am with this and anything’s possible. Thank you to each and every person who’s been part of my journey, you have my heart forever and always, thank you so much!”
Everyone was welling up at Raye brining her grandma on stage – including Maya Jama, dabbing her eyes behind the camera.
Album: Raye – My 21st Century Blues
It’s pretty much a clean sweep for Raye, who has won every award she was up for bar the best pop category – and she was in the best song category twice – and in doing so smashed the record for the most awards won in one year (previously four, held jointly by Adele, Blur and Harry Styles). To deliver the news is the headteacher of the Brits school – where Raye was a student for two years before dropping out as she felt “confined”.
Raye bursts into tears when her name is called, and brings her grandma Agatha Dawson-Amoah, resplendent in green velvet, up on stage with her, and grabs her hand at the podium before sobbing openly into the mic.
“You just don’t understand what this means to me! This is… [weeps] I wanna thank Mike Sabath, executive producer, I love you, my best friend. I wanna thank my grandma for her prayers. My grandma is awake til 3am praying for me and my beautiful sisters, I love you so much. My middle name is Agatha and her name is Agatha Dawson! I wanna thank all of the writers and the musicians [weeps some more] Is this happening right now?! I’m so sorry. I wanna thank all the writers who were part of this. I wanna thank … I’m ugly crying on national television. I’m so proud of this album, I’m in love with music, all I ever wanted to be was an artist and now I’m artist with an album of the year! Thank you so much to the Brits, this is too much, this is too much, really it is. Come on grandma, let’s go!”
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Rema's performance reviewed
Long championed by the diaspora here, the rest of the UK has eventually come around to the charms of African pop, with massive chart hits for Burna Boy, Libianca and Tyla in recent years – and the biggest of all has been Calm Down by Nigerian vocalist Rema, which is the kind of perfect earworm that doesn’t just go round your head all day but then also decides to buy a timeshare in your subconscious.
Like Raye he gets a souped-up full-band arrangement but this one actually suits the song much better; the tempo has been slightly upped to keep the energy high, and perhaps to free up some more space for Maya Jama chatting about getting wrecked, as is her wont. But there’s still space for the song to simmer down to a tender standstill, then explode into a bombastic coda. Rema has a gorgeous open book of a voice, and he negotiates the song’s little curlicues with ease, making this one of the night’s best performances. He’s wearing the kind of fur hat that would see you right through a Yukon winter, and as a broadsheet journalist and father it behoves me to say “he must be bloody boiling in that”.
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International song: Miley Cyrus – Flowers
Named record of the year at the Grammys last month, Flowers now gets … more flowers at the Brits, though it’s a fairly generic song in a category filled with more innovative ones – Doja Cat’s Paint the Town Red, Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire, Rema’s Calm Down, SZA’s Kill Bill, Tyla’s Water. Still, in terms of UK impact, it spent 10 weeks at UK No 1 last year, so the gong makes sense. Like most international superstars, Miley isn’t here – “we forgive her cos she’s got incredible hair,” says presenter Bimini – but she’s sent a video in which she is sporting massive hair and a tiny sparkly dress!
“Hello to everybody at the Brits. I wanted to say thank you so much for voting Flowers as the international song of the year, and a special thank you for giving me somewhere to wear this dress. It’s incredible to win but the real prize is having this incredible song hit around the world. I know this video is a little short but I just wanted it to match my dress.”
And with a twirl, she’s done. The Canadian critic Carl Wilson recently described Miley as the next Cher, and it’s hard to disagree.
Bimini speaks up for trans rights
Finally, something approaching a political statement, after the brief Post Office comment earlier on. Presenting the international song category, former Drag Race star Bimini says:
“Right now in the UK it’s a really difficult time for a lot of people, and trans people and non binary people more so, and I want you to know that everyone in this room loves you and you are valid, and trans rights are human rights.”
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The reliance on drinking gags is so desperate that Roman Kemp is doing shots with Calvin Harris, who is long sober and having a mocktail. Though the “reveal” is that Kemp’s drink is a Saltburn shot, labelled “Harry Styles’ bathwater”. Harris professes to have liked it. If this is what passes for spicy … someone smash the emergency “Jack Whitehall and Haim” button.
Artist: Raye
This is a pretty formidable category full of hugely worthy winners – Central Cee, Dave, J Hus, Jessie Ware, Little Simz – but claimed again by Raye, who looks around as if she’s waiting for a candid camera to pop out. She even opens the envelope to check that yes, she has won her fifth award of the night.
“Thank you to the Brits. There are so many ridiculously incredible artists here tonight, so this is especially overwhelming. Man, what is happening? What the hell is happening? Shoutout Croydon! South London! What! Shoutout my team! My sisters! My best friend Carly, I love you so much Carly, don’t start me off! Thank you, this is unfair, this is unfair, this is wild. Somebody take this mic off me, I’ve had my first drink. Thank you to the Brits, thank you so much!”
Can she make it to seven? Let’s find out!
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Chase & Status and Becky Hill's performance reviewed
Becky Hill won the dance category the last two years and was Olivia-Colman-at-the-Oscars levels of endearing when picking up each: someone who palpably loves dance music culture and isn’t too cool to pretend she doesn’t. It’s right there in her singing voice, too – gloriously histrionic and keen of feeling – and she’s now become the patron saint of nights out in clubs where you make questionable life choices. Legend has it that if write “motive” on a Be At One mirror in lipstick and chant her name three times she jumps out with a Jägerbomb. Chase & Status’s stock meanwhile is higher than ever: having stayed with a drum’n’bass scene that had waned out of the charts in recent years, they were ready to capitalise when it inevitably came back around, with their outrageously huge track Baddadan.
They open with a snatch of Baddadan delivered by Irah, and then into the Hill-helmed Disconnect, whose headily rising melody has the requisite wobbly-eyed dancefloor headrush. They switch back again to Baddadan, if only for a brief spell, and back to Disconnect – it’s not easy to conjure the feel of switching between two decks in a nightclub at the cavernous O2 Arena, but all concerned make a good stab at it, and Hill is in typically brilliant voice. This was a shot in the arm for a slightly deflated Brits.
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Producer: Chase and Status
Hard to tell why some of the pre-announced awards, such as this one, are properly televised and some aren’t; and whether producer is meant to acknowledge “someone who makes other people’s songs” or “produces dance music”. Anyway. Here’s a nice VT on how the duo drew inspiration from rave and have been ploughing the drum’n’bass furrow for nearly 20 years, albeit an incorrect voiceover about how they’ve “headlined” Glastonbury (they haven’t).
Saul Milton thanks the fans/mums/wives/management and “the big man Naylor”, while Will Kennard adds: “We’re proud to represent British music, to champion new talent always, but mostly tonight we are proud to represent drum’n’bass music.”
Presumably keeping things quick because they’re up next with Becky Hill…
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Raye's performance reviewed
There’s a fairytale stardust across this performance, a coronation moment for a pop Cinderella who at one point was very much not invited to the ball, and left to toil in the depths of a major label for years. She extricated herself from that flatlining deal and became one of the UK’s most successful independent artists, a turnaround marked by her record-breaking seven nominations. She’s already won three Brits – and there’s still some big awards she might still secure.
She first performs Ice Cream Man on piano: a song about how she was sexually assaulted during a recording session, and the kind of raw and candid songwriting she didn’t seem to get to make in her unhappy spell with Polydor Records. Then it’s into an orchestral version of Prada, her mega-banger that earned her one of two song of the year nominations, and then a 1920s lindy-hop intro to Escapism – her other song of the year nomination – before switching up again into a sumptuous big band arrangement.
For me, it’s the crispness of the rap drum programming of the original that gives the song its urgency, and makes its tale of nihilist bacchanalia work, given that it’s something you might actually listen to in a bout of nihilist bacchanalia. I don’t think she needs the heavily telegraphed classiness of the orchestral version – this uniquely tortured song doesn’t need or suit it – and perhaps there was too much packed into this megamix performance. But there’s no doubting Raye’s conviction, star quality and ability to carry her pain to the back of the biggest arenas – and it certainly looks like this evening is deservedly turning into that fairytale ending. Or rather beginning.
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Rising Star: the Last Dinner Party
Very brief cutaway to the table there as Clara Amfo introduces the Rising Star award winners. Says singer Abigail Morris of Raye’s performance: “You know when Gaga did the VMAs in 2009? I feel like we just saw history being made.”
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Finally, a proper Brits moment. Hair-raising!
International group: Boygenius
Boygenius announced their hiatus in February, presumably so that Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus can return to their respective solo careers. After winning three Grammy awards last month, this is a great final – for now – coronation for a supergroup greater than the sum of its parts, whose debut album The Record struck a huge chord with listeners and who were clearly having a great time during their performances and even their playful press (to wit: the brilliant photoshoot for our 2023 interview with them). Here they are on video, starting off with a massive “wooooo!”
Julien: “Hello Brit awards, thank you for voting us best international group of the year!”
Lucy: “We wanna thank our label Polydor for making this possible. Long live Boygenius.”
Phoebe: “Thank you so much.”
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Curious that ITV are leaning heavily on BBC property The Traitors here!
Pop act: Dua Lipa
Both Dua Lipa and Charli XCX are in this category on the strength of songs from the Barbie soundtrack, not even their own new album eras – both of which are just starting and will see them eligible next year – which suggests a barrel scraped a touch thin. But here’s Dua winning the fan-voted category on the basis of Dance the Night.
“Amazing, thank you so much! Well I guess for more reasons than one my fans are the reasons why I’m standing here today, so I wanna say a massive thank you to each and every single one of you who have voted for me. This means so much, I’m so, so happy to be here. You guys give me this radical sense of confidence that I can do anything, I can try and experiment … and all the love and optimism and support is what inspires me, so thank you so much. Beyond that, it takes a village, so I want to thank my dad-ager … [thanks team/label at length, you can imagine the rest].”
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Jungle's performance reviewed
If you need a précis on who Jungle are, they named themselves after the some of the most forward-thinking music in the UK, and then proceeded to make some of the most backward-thinking music in the UK. They started out with the Fifa 14 loading screen-core of stuff like Busy Earnin’ and have since graduated to what is very much the “live laugh love” of funk and soul music, with less edge than my toddler-proofed kitchen. Their decidedly un-pyroclastic 2023 album Volcano sound like a tepid mix of other artists with everything that made those artists good removed – it’s no-sodium Sault; not so much the Temptations as the Ooh No I Musn’ts. Or like someone asked that Adobe AI music software that dropped this week for “J Dilla for Tory barbecues”. Indeed, they’re so blah they should probably be put on an Arts Council protection list for artists most under threat of being replaced by artificial intelligence. They seem nice and one of them cried a bit at winning best group and I’m not so jaded to not go a bit gooey at that – but come on, Young Fathers are right there.
They’re playing their sleeper hit Back on 74 which does have a pretty, if rather inconsequential-feeling, chorus melody – and the strutting dancers lift the cruise-ship-at-teatime feel just a little. But this is one of the most forgettable performance I can remember at the Brits, which is to say it feels like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones barged past Guardian security and hit me with that Men In Black mind ray. The earth spins onward and leaves this behind.
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Hip-hop/grime/rap act: Casisdead
This is an astonishing win, given that Casisdead is substantially less commercially successful than Central Cee, Little Simz, Dave and J Hus – and in a completely separate lane, too, flowing over a kind of 80s-inspired synthwave vibe. No one knows who he actually is – and that’s not his “real” face, covered as it is by subtle prosthetics. It’s a testament to him building a really devoted fanbase, in thrall to someone who has charted his own weird way through UK rap culture, shrugging off genre labels as he goes.
“This is well funny. Look man, there’s so many people involved in this record, I don’t have time to thank everyone cos I know you wanna get pissed up so I’ll keep it moving. I’ll thank you guys personally later. Buy the vinyl cos the thank yous are in the vinyl. But what I do wanna do is take the time to thank the stans, without you none of this would happen … Thank you XL for letting me do what I want.”
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Dance act: Calvin Harris
And let Charli run the whole thing, co-presenting this award. “Shout out to all the hot girls in the place, where you at! Dua Lipa, Raye, where you at! OK we should do our job…”
I feel like Fred Again and Romy have had more cultural significance this year but you can’t argue with Miracle, the Ellie Goulding collab we saw earlier, spending eight weeks at UK No 1 last year.
“Wow. Wow. Thank you. First and foremost I wanna dedicate this award to Danny Rampling’s Love Groove Dance Party. I wanna thank Ellie Goulding, wherever she is. Ellie, I wouldnae be on this stage this year if it wasn’t for you. What you brought to Miracle was unbelievable, I couldn’t have done this with anybody else. Burns, who I’ve been working with this year finally, my old friend, finally making tunes together this year. And I wanna say thank you to my beautiful wife [Vick Hope].”
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JUST GIVE THE AWARD TO CHARLI, GIVE ALL THE AWARDS TO CHARLI
New artist: Raye
Raye only needs one more award to tie Adele, Blur and and Harry Styles for the most awards received in a single year (ie four). As I wrote yesterday, “best new artist” does seem like a particularly poignant category for Raye, who is nine years into her career but only started her second creatively free act two years ago. Great haughty pout from fellow nominee PinkPantheress there; meanwhile Raye and the lady handing out the microphone appear to be on first-name terms at this point:
“What is actually happening right now ‘cause I just don’t understand! I have to thank my mum and my dad who are also part of my team, and my grandma. Yes grandma! I, in ways, do feel like a new artist. I released my first song when I was 15, my first mixtape when I was 16, don’t go and listen to it because it’s not that good any more. But I do feel like a new artist, I got to start again. The artist I was three years ago would not believe what she’s seeing today. I’m my own boss now, I’m in control. Thank you!”
Wait! Clara’s out to give Raye another award, mentioning how she gave Raye her first radio play back when she was a teenager – and giving her the previously announced songwriter of the year award. (Which also makes the best new artist thing a bit absurd.) “Brit awards coming like buses, you wait for one and three come along!” says Clara, while Raye shakes her head and laughs – then remembers what she wants to say, taking a stand for songwriters’ rights:
“Oh wait sorry! Please, whilst I’m here, British record music industry please, I just wanna have a brief conversation about normalising giving songwriters master royalty points. It can be net costs, it doesn’t have to be at your expense, but it means if songs win big the writers win big too. Please allow that to happen.”
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Tate McRae's performance reviewed
Even a year ago this booking might have felt a bit B-list but McRae has become so absolutely enormous in the interim that this now feels like a bit of a coup. Greedy, up for best international song, has been a vast success on streaming, and follow-up Exes hasn’t done shabbily either. Anyone who had her pegged as a Billie Eilish clone in the wake of her bruised piano ballad You Broke Me First has been comprehensively proven wrong: some of her best performances have been over throbbing deep house (You), tech-y EDM (10.35) and glossy new wave (She’s All I Wanna Be).
We’re getting Greedy here, and there’s lots of purposeful walking while she lets the backing track do the heavy lifting. Of course there’s a segment ringfenced for her to do her oft-viral bougie-streetdance choreography – and while my cardio levels are such that I could barely say my own name after doing all that, she does stay firmly in her vocal comfort zone again, idly moving around her middle range. It does feel a bit phoned-in, and can’t help but feel disappointing given this is the biggest American star the Brits have conjured this year. Meanwhile, I’m also having a full-on new-dad moment at being baffled by her abdominal fashion choices.
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OK new drinking game: take a sip of Horlicks every time the presenters make another wearying booze gag (“gag”) and hopefully you’ll have conked out before the night ends.
And we’re back to the dreadful drinking “gags”, a mainstay of the Mo Gilligan era. Is Kylie Minogue going to drink from a shoe in the Australian “shoey” tradition? … Yes she is. Just say stilett-no.
Oh boy, can’t wait for “American superstar” Tate McRae (she’s Canadian) after the break. Maya Jama might be playing hard and fast with accuracy there on more than one level.
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International artist: SZA
The Brits can struggle to attract international pop superstars and hardly any of this category is here – only Asake, Caroline Polachek, CMAT and Kylie Minogue seem to be here from the nominations – and so it is with the winner SZA, who had a huge year in 2023 thanks to the December 2022 release of her sublime second album SOS and only appears tonight in video form.
“I’m so grateful for this honour, thank you for bumping my music, and I hear you’re at the O2 which is my favourite … and I should be back really soon!”
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I’m on the floor among the celebs and everyone is wearing black leather – that seems to be a look this year. A lot of leather trousers on the men. All the ex-Love Islanders were loving Calvin and Ellie, which says a lot.
ITV and the British music industry’s primetime Saturday night showcase is going down well on Twitter. The only way to jazz it up: massive Kate Middleton reveal in the middle of Jungle’s performance.
There’s something very icky about this years’ #BritAwards the vibes are so off and the crowd is so dead. 🥴 pic.twitter.com/uWyfLcsCzK
— Kieran Maddison (@KieranMaddison6) March 2, 2024
#BritAwards Is there even anyone in the audience. pic.twitter.com/idtmshwqfq
— Davies (@hayleydavies121) March 2, 2024
This is all so awkward? Why are the crowd essentially silent and not responding to anything the presenters or artists are saying?! #BritAwards pic.twitter.com/jvDpfMDhAY
— Ashleigh Day (@AshleighAnn11) March 2, 2024
Me watching the #BritAwards having not heard of any of these nominees pic.twitter.com/94ISRyFUBE
— Sophi 🔮 (@sophiwithnoe) March 2, 2024
Alternative/rock act: Bring Me the Horizon
The Sheffield band win the all-male category in a rare mainstream showing for British metal, often sorely overlooked at the Brits and the Mercury award. It’s their first ever Brit award, though they performed live with Ed Sheeran a couple of years ago. I am extremely here for the cutaways to an extremely bored-looking Young Fathers, who should have won this. But here’s to BMTH’s sweary speech, which leads to a good part of it being blanked out.
Oli Sykes: “I reyt don’t know what to say ‘cause we didn’t think we’d be winning this at all. Cheers to the Brits for making the voting system so complicated only our fans could be arsed, thanks to our fans [sweary sweary swearing] This is bloody insane this. Cheers to our management, family, all that stuff. I’m not gonna say owt else, thank you so much, cheers. Reyt good.”
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Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding's performance reviewed
The UK may be a petty, pursed-lipped, radically ungenerous island – but certain things get me waving a Union Jack like I’m the admin for a Facebook page about Spitfire maintenance, and our love of dance music is one of them. More than rap, more than indie-rock, more than Dua Lipa trying really hard, commercial dance is our national pop music, and the way we rallied around Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding’s Miracle to send it to No 1 for eight weeks had me staring wistfully off the white cliffs of Dover. My millennial nostalgia was juiced by Harris essentially splicing trance classics Tell It to My Heart, Castles In the Sky and Seven Days and One Week, and Goulding’s ethereality makes her the perfect trance vocalist. But you don’t get a hit of this stature through nostalgia alone: it’s a copper-bottomed bit of songwriting.
Ellie Goulding stays in that ethereal tone throughout, rarely bringing in that rougher grade of sandpaper that so differentiates her voice from the rest of her peers – and of course Calvin uninterestingly prods some equipment that may or may not be plugged in. But just as this performance starts to feel a bit mid, he gives it the full Sundissential treatment with a hard-trance breakdown lifted from the Hardwell remix, as Ellie bounds around with her backing dancers like they’re a bunch of kids who have just set a toilet on fire at Leeds festival. Vibes retrieved!
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R&B act: Raye
Two down! This one is voted for by the public via Instagram. It’s a new standalone genre category after musicians and fans complained about R&B being conjoined with the pop slot last year: one of those musicians, Mahalia, was nominated this year. Arguably Raye does so much more than R&B – and if we’re talking genre purists, it would have been lovely to see Cleo Sol win this – but I begrudge her precisely nothing. “What!” she mouths as the camera turns to her.
“Hi! Look I just wanna say, when I was about 16, 15 years old, I wanted to be an R&B artist, that’s what I would say. And I was told, I think, a lie that R&B doesn’t sell in the UK so I needed to learn how to make different kinds of music. I know that’s a bit shady but I need to say R&B is so important and there are so many R&B artists in the UK eating it up. I wanna shout out to Mahalia, who campaigned for this award, Cleo Sol, who’s immaculate, Sault. This really is a lot – thank you.”
MORE SHADE PLEASE!
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I will be passing Ben the smelling salts during this one as I don’t know that I’ve ever known him to love a song so much in the six-plus years we’ve worked together. I find Ellie Goulding’s voice a bit like opening a bag of icing sugar, accidentally inhaling a bit and choking.
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Group: Jungle
“There’s been some pretty awesome bands that have come out of the UK,” says Billie Joe Armstrong. But … Jungle? Really? Young Fathers should have blitzed this with their fantastic, absurdist sound, showcased on last year’s Heavy Heavy, our No 2 album of the year – and they look pretty nonplussed at their table – but instead it goes to Jungle, tepid white soul pastiche artists whose greatest contribution to British music is a lot of soundtracks for sports montages.
It’s their first Brit nomination and thus award, and they spend their excitable acceptance speech – which features the first sweary sound blot-out of the night on the ITV feed – thanking their team and families. Forgettable in every way.
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Song: Raye – Escapism ft 070 Shake
One down, five possible gongs to go! Raye wins her first award of the night for Escapism, one of the songs she claimed was left collecting dust in a filing cabinet when her former label Polydor declined to release it. More fool them: Raye went it alone as an independent artist, the song hit UK No 1, was the biggest-selling song by a British female artist in 2023 and it went many-times platinum all over the world. She is literally leaping up and down with glee – and in bare feet.
“Ahhh! What! Thank you God, like wow! I’m shaking. I didn’t … I don’t really know what to say right now but thank you, thank you to my team. Wow, I’ve always dreamed of saying that, ‘thank you to my team’. Thank you to my distribution company who are called Human Resources, a small little imprint in America, no one else would take my songs but J [Erving], thank you for believing in this music. Thank you to Mike Sabbath, who collaborated on my entire album on this song. He made the beat, I heard it in the car. I can’t believe this is happening, aaah!”
Loving her saying that she’s always dreamed of saying “thank you to my team”! A graceful barb.
Plus in the presenters’ prelude, we got our first political statement of the night from the stars of ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office: “In spite of what the government say, they’re not paying the postmasters.”
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Dua Lipa opens the show – her performance reviewed
It would be inaccurate to say that Dua Lipa is entering her flop era – the first singles from her upcoming album, Houdini and Training Season, are currently in or around the top 20 most streamed songs globally on Spotify. But there’s something a little gimlet-eyed in how they’re written – catchy in a grimly determined rather than breezily natural way – that makes them hard to love, and some mean media types (not me, yet!) are wondering if she could be on the way down the other side of fame’s hill.
Well, that performance should quieten them down a bit. Dressed in her second leather ensemble of the night, she launches into Training Season and while I find this song really quite plodding and funkless on record, Lipa lifts this B-tier material with a really robust vocal performance – she sounds like she absolutely has to have the sexual-spiritual connection she’s singing about, and her voice doesn’t waver even when strutting around a populous troupe of acrobatic dancers. That’s the kind of boot-camp vocal training that only peak pop stars can haul themselves through – and it makes for a potent opening.
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We’re graced with a new cohort of presenters this year, Clara Amfo, Maya Jama and Roman Kemp. All dyed-in-the-wool actual presenters, the Brits are seemingly going for “abject professionalism” this year after the shambolic “comedy” of Mo Gilligan the past two years. Or … 70s variety show with this Love Island “kiss cam” bit? What! (I have never seen Love Island and have no idea what is going on here.)
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And we're off
This Dua Lipa performance of Training Season is giving James Bond opening titles via Cirque de Soleil. Will this performance vanquish the “go on girl give us nothing” meme spawned by her performance at the 2018 Brit awards?
Pity these poor dancers, suspended above the stage waiting for Dua Lipa’s opening performance to start.
Excellent stuff happening on the ITV2 red carpet feed as the presenter asks Caroline Polachek whether her dress, with its elf-ears-cum-Madonna-cone-bra is “a homemade affair”?
“If only,” she says, barely hiding her disdain. “This is a Jean Paul Gaultier and Simone Rocha collab.” [Presses delete on part two of costume box joke.]
Two of Green Day here, looking like a middle-aged goth couple who used to be cool but have rung your Ring doorbell four times about your poor recycling bin management in recent weeks, but you’re ignoring them, so they’re getting right up to the camera to express their disapproval.
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Did Griff: 1. Struggle from option paralysis about which outfit to wear? 2. Have a fight with the Last Dinner Party over the costume box? Hard to tell.
Olly Alexander, AKA our Eurovision entry this year, which is … fine. Bit mid-table. If you’re a country people actually like. Which we’re not. Here’s Laura’s review from yesterday.
Big “Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen hosting an immersive murder mystery weekend” energy to this frock coat. Brits awards-art history hive: is that Joan of Arc down there? What does this represent if so?
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Shout out to Cassö, who is wearing an outfit so boring I haven’t even bothered to crop the whole thing, but who I massively venerate after he made the mighty Prada – a huge high-tempo dance banger splicing Raye and D-Block Europe with the energy emanating from a Renault Clio packed with five 17-year-olds. He made it on a laptop while he was at Swansea uni and ended up becoming one of the biggest songs of 2023, spending 22 weeks in the Top 10, five of them at No 2 – and now it’s up for song of the year. An unfairly little-trumpeted British success story.
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Here’s Annie Clark AKA St Vincent, who just presented the Last Dinner Party with their Rising Star award on the ITV2 red carpet coverage – quite possibly because guitarist Emily Roberts plays a signature St Vincent guitar on stage.
And there you have it:
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Joe Keery from Stranger Things, looking like the rhythm guitarist from a band in 2007 who are trying to get past that bruising 4/10 in the NME in 2005. Actually, though, he’s a properly massive pop star as well, recording as Djo – his song End of Beginning is currently the fifth most streamed song in the world right now on Spotify with 5m plays a day.
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Oh spirit come, we beckon you! Oh wait it’s best international artist nominee Caroline Polachek.
Speaking of the Last Dinner Party, here is Alexis Petridis’s review of their very hyped debut album.
Bring Me the Horizon here, looking like they’ve just been busted for smoking weed by their mum who’s wandered over to the bus shelter with their dad hovering impotently behind. Hand it over lads! Look, to my mind they’re the best band in the UK and would be thoroughly deserving winners of the rock/alternative category they’re nominated in, following a year of awesome singles.
Is it post-ironic to wear a dress saying “I’m Only Here For Your Entertainment” in a sarcastic font to a primetime ITV-screened industry “bash”? Jury’s out.
Kylie looking overjoyed as you would be if you’d been named a Global Icon (capital letters very much warranted). There will undoubtedly be a comprehensive costume change for when she accepts that award and probably another for closing the show with, we presume, a hits megamix centred around Padam Padam – by which time every music industry functionary will have had around twelve (12) bottles of wine and will be throwing shapes like someone bringing a plane into land in high winds.
And the winner of next year’s best song category is here: if you haven’t heard Charli XCX’s aggressively brilliant comeback single Von Dutch yet, you’re 547 plays behind me and can catch up right here.
Can’t believe Victoria Beckham circa 2001 is here!
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Hello, Laura here. This week I learned that in 1959, Volvo invented the three-point car seatbelt and recognised that it was such a gamechanger in safety that the Swedish automobilists gave away the patent to other companies for free. Just on my mind as I look at this photo of best dance act nominee – and previous winner – Becky Hill for no reason, I am sure. (Becky is one of my favourite Brits characters of recent years thanks to her propensity for enjoying her table’s liquid wares before coming up to collect her gongs.)
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I know it’s a journo cliche to say that someone has dressed up like a Quality Street, but Jacob Collier is wearing three distinct Quality Street wrappers here and you very much suspect he considered a fourth.
So all the multifarious reality TV stars who get on the red carpet at about 2pm yesterday have all filed through, leaving us with some actual musicians. Here’s Casisdead, making a brilliant effort with a phalanx of bodyguards branded with his Deadcorp project name. I wasn’t a huge fan of his album last year – I felt like the lyricism didn’t meet the ambition of the overall endeavour – but he admirably does a lot more world-building than most British artists, creating an entire cyperpunk dystopia as a backdrop for his tales of crime and trauma. He’s the outside bet in the rap genre category, up against some big beasts in the form of Central Cee, Dave, Little Simz and J Hus – but it’s fan-voted, and his fans adore him, so he’s got a chance.
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Welcome to the Brits 2024!
It may have less star power than the Grammys, less critical clout than the Mercury and essentially be a celebration of naked commercial success – but dammit, the Brit awards remain one of the most silly, palpably British and occasionally quite subversive shows in the global awards season.
The big story this year is Raye already winning songwriter of the year and scoring a record seven nominations across the field tonight – including two in song of the year. Can she convert any, or indeed all of them? But there’ll be plenty more action besides, from Dua Lipa opening the show to Kylie closing it as the Global Icon award winner. Join us here as we rate and slate the live performances and red carpet looks, and chart all the award-winners, speeches and – this being the Brits – moments of evident drunkenness. Chin chin!
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