Busted? Really? This is a joke, surely

I think I might have blogged about The Brits last year. This year they’d certainly learnt one lesson from that exercise in paint drying observance, (no alcohol=dull ceremony), but other than that, it was more of the same old rubbish as every other year. I don’t know why I watch it. Like some kind of addict I just can’t help myself, but it always leaves me wondering why I don’t remember the last year of music quite that way. The choices are always just so safe.

I think Busted getting Best British Breakthrough Artist probably marks some sort of nadir even for the Brits (at least the Sam Fox/Mick Fleetwood debacle had comedy value). There’s only one of those four words I’d even remotely agree with, and it isn’t Best, Breakthrough or Artist. (What exactly are they supposed to have broken-through? It must be awfully hard to get radio play when you only have major-label backing, a svengali-style manager and a team of publicists on your side…)

And the performances–Simon Le Bon not quite getting the high notes on Wild Boys; Busted (them again) doing Teenage Kicks by numbers, and little Jazz elf Jamie what’s-his-face and that sub-Norah Jones woman with the cheapest-looking TV advert (ever) massacring The Cure–were a bit too much to take.

And at one point there was supposedly going to be some sort of collaboration between Outkast and Beyonce. In reality, Outkast (no doubt reeling still from the news that, actually, you shouldn’t shake it like a Polaroid picture) came on and played their hit song, and then left and on came Beyonce to play her hit song. At no point were they on the stage together. That’s not a collaboration; that’s two people playing their own songs one after the other.

I’m sorry, I just struggle to believe that Spinal The Darkness, Busted, Daniel Bedingfield and Annie Len Dido are the best things in British music at the moment. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs if it’s true.