Key events
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Laura Snapes
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.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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?
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Laura Snapes
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:
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Laura Snapes
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.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Laura Snapes
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.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Laura Snapes
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.
Laura Snapes
Can’t believe Victoria Beckham circa 2001 is here!
Laura Snapes
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.)
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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.
Welcome to the Brits 2024!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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!