The Brit Awards 2012 can best be summed up by something Chris Martin said on the night. That it was great to be a part of the Brits because when he was a kid they were naff, but now that Coldplay are involved they’re oh so much better (or something along those lines). Really Chris? Has it really taken the addition of your stadium rock sky dance to take the Brit Awards to the next level?
The reality is that what made The Brit Awards bad in the first place is just as present now as it was then. However, that’s not to say that it was all bad. It’s just that there was still a lot of it.
Firstly, James Cordon was lacking in any semblance of humour or whiff of comic timing. When you’re getting shown up by the crowd and they’re more interested in going for a mid performance trip to the bog than listening to your inane chat, it’s time to face facts and start looking for some new writers. The worst offense though was the awkward interviews with stars, where he’d clearly gone too far in the opposite direction of the rant of years gone by that led to his much publicised and pathetically spun “downfall” (honestly, if you’ve got to go on Piers Morgan’s fckwyt show to plead your case, you know you’ve got it wrong).
The interview with Kylie Minogue was all kinds of terrible, and while he snivellingly praised Olly Murrs, of all people, he managed to pull out the weakest joke of the night following Taylor Hawkins’ recorded interview, dribbling out “party on Wayne”.
In terms of performances, Murrs could have easily been replaced by a random they pulled out of any number of karaoke clubs out Essex way without too much difference! One of the best performances of the night though was Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, but it’s a shame there weren’t any other more youthful and yet musically similar acts. Coldplay’s performance was typical stadium filler, but Chris Martin pulled it back around a bit by playing some nice improvised piano in the background of AKA What a Life for NGHFBs. Rhianna was on good form too with one of the most impressive looking sets of the night.
The awards themselves were, in general, pretty limp. Ed Sheeran walked away with an irrelevant number of them thanks to the type of music that is about as close to religious folk as you can get without mentioning god, jesus or the Sea of Galilee once. F.ing terrible! The Blur lifetime thing sounded good to start with, but they’re so out of touch now that they just put a downer on things. “We’d like to thank our mums, and our family and our…” on and on it went without the glimmer of a music legend. It was depressing. This was seconded by out of tune singing from Damon Albarn later in the night, which was sad to see. The reason they were so good in the 90s was because they were infused with white heat, but now it looks like they’ve been dowsed in sloth pss.
The Brit Awards 2012 was much better produced than has previously been the case, and while there were the occasional good performances, in general it’s still short of the mark. Where the Mercury Awards are too industry, The Brit Awards are too mainstream. The year Blur won their first Brit Award made it feel like the gap had been bridged, but now 17 years on, we’re back to being worse than we ever were. Fingers crossed for next year eh.
The Brit Awards 2012 review: 2.5/5
