Yep, the awards season is back upon us – the time of year when the entire entertainment industry likes to remind us all to start spending money again after the post-Christmas lull. After the film industry have had their turn this weekend with the Bafta’s, its music’s turn to hog the spotlight on 15 Feb with what promises to be one of the biggest Brit Awards ceremonies ever. But rather than rely on the Brits’ (dubious) voting panel to tell us who the deserved winners are this year, we’ve decided to pick our own winners – so read on, enjoy, and let us know who you think will be this years big winners and losers…British Male Solo Artist
Nominees: Mark Ronson, Paul Weller, Plan B, Robert Plant, Tinie Tempah
All-Noise verdict: Interesting category, with a good mix of the old and the new. While it’s fairly obvious that current chart golden boy Tinie will walk off with the Brits statuette, we reckon it deserves to go to Plan B, who’s album not only received phenomenal chart success, it proved that invention, creativity and artistic courage is still alive and well in the British music industry.
British Female Solo Artist
Nominees: Cheryl Cole, Ellie Goulding, Laura Marling, Paloma Faith, Rumer
All-Noise verdict: This one’s nice and easy. Anyone with half a brain and at least one functioning ear drum will tell you that Laura Marling is head and shoulders above any of the others.
British Breakthrough Act
Nominees: Ellie Goulding, Mumford & Sons, Rumer , Tinie Tempah, The XX
All-Noise verdict: We’re torn between Tinie Tempah and The XX on this one. Tinie because, in fairness, he has set the charts alight this past year; and The XX because, well, they’re the only decent act in the list! Seeing as this award should be judged on levels of, erm, ‘breakthrough-ness’, we’ll plump for The XX – you can’t win the Mercury prize and become everyone’s favourite new band without ‘breaking through’, can you?
Best British Group
Nominees: Biffy Clyro, Gorillaz, Mumford & Sons, Take That, The XX
All-Noise verdict: Hmmm, are British groups a bit light on the ground this year or what? Or have the Brits panel engineered such a lightweight category to justify giving Take That yet another undeserved high profile award? Got to think about those viewing figures after all! For the simple reason that Gorillaz would deserve to beat the rest of the nominees purely on the strength of their scratchy iPad album ‘The Fall’, we’ll plump for them.
Best British Single
All-Noise verdict: We won’t go through the whole list of nominees and song titles on this one – just imagine the tracklisting for a particularly rubbish ‘Now’ compilation and you’ll get the idea. The ones that jump out at us are Plan B’s ‘She Said’ and Florence’s ‘You’ve Got The Love’. Those two are a bit closely matched, both in terms of quality and the fact we’ve heard them both about a million times! We’ll give this one to Plan B though – as we can’t let Florence win with a cover, can we?
MasterCard British Album of the Year
Nominees: Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More, Plan B – The Defamation of Strickland Banks, Take That – Progress, Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy, The XX – XX
All-Noise verdict: Another decidedly lightweight category featuring Take That – it’s almost as it they want to give Take That more awards! Out of this lot we think The XX deserve to win – as we’ve given Plan B enough awards already and the rest don’t even deserve to be there!
International Male Solo Artist
Nominees: Bruce Springsteen, Cee Lo Green, David Guetta, Eminem, Kanye West
All-Noise verdict: This is more like it – something we can get our teeth into! Apart from the token ‘chart success’ inclusion of Guetta, the rest all deserve a bit of recognition this year. Kanye’s album was a bit good though so, for us, he should walk away with the award.
International Female Solo Artist
Nominees: Alicia Keys, Katy Perry, Kylie Minogue, Rihanna, Robyn
All-Noise verdict: Erm, where’s MIA? Is producing a massively successful, progressive and creative album and selling out arenas all year not enough to get her on a list with Robyn and Katy Perry?! And what has Kylie Minogue done recently that’s so special? Seeing as we can make our own rules up here, we’ll award this to MIA – and well deserved it is too!
International Breakthrough Act
Nominess: Bruno Mars, Glee Cast, Justin Bieber, The National, The Temper Trap
All-Noise verdict: While we were pleasantly surprised at how good The Temper Trap were at V Festival, we can’t look any further than The National, who finally ‘broke through’ and got the recognition they deserved last year.
International Group
Nominees: Arcade Fire, Black Eyed Peas, Kings of Leon, The Script, Vampire Weekend
All-Noise verdict: Arcade Fire, without a shadow of a doubt. Best album, best gigs, best everything really – which leads us nicely onto…
International Album
Nominees: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs, Cee Lo Green – The Lady Killer, Eminem – Recovery, Katy Perry – Teenage Dream, Kings Of Leon – Come Around Sundown
All-Noise verdict: If Kanye was on this list it would have been a harder decision, but the outcome would probably still be the same – Arcade Fire by a landslide.
Critics’ Choice
Nominees: Jessie J (Winner), James Blake, The Vaccines
All-Noise verdict: No real point seeing as the winner has already been announced, but just to be different we’d have given it to The Vaccines!
British Producer
Nominees: Ethan Johns, John Leckie, Markus Dravs, Mike Pela Stuart Price
All-Noise verdict: While Ethan Johns’ work on Laura Marling’s album was great, John Leckie is a bit of a legend so we’d have to give it to him.
So there you have it – a few contentious picks, but we weren’t helped by some, quite frankly, bizarre nominations! Let us know who you think deserves to win, or lose, in the comments below…
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3 thoughts on “Brits 2011 – we pick the winners”
spacca
(2011-02-10 - 9:35 am)Yeah, I have to admit this review is just about spot on. Arcade fire have made an album that I will be listening to in years to come with the same level of enjoyment that The Stone Roses, OK Computer, Sreamadelica, and other ‘quality’ albums deliver. A great piece of work from start to finish. If they don’t win an award then the Brits is even more pointless than I first thought.
Plan B deserve all the slaps on the back they can get too. Something unpidgeonholeable about their take on music. Like a mashup album that isn’t. LIke the bastard child of a forgotten, seasoned session singer from the STAX era and an east end geezer. Honey for the ears.
The National have been a revelation to me this/last year too. On the surface you could just stick ‘m in the miserable bin but after some listening there’s a great well of sonic depth in their songs and the lyrics aren’t too shabby either.
International female? Pointless category given the lineup. Minogue FFS! Really? What has she done in the past 5 years to even be short listed? Robyn, maybe for making LOTS of shite albums but not for being good. I’d have just stuck a knife in this category and said there’d been a terrible accident and it couldn’t attend.
Funniest listig HAS to be Cheryl “toilet brawler” Cole. Combining both a monumental lack of talent with a vacuous and self inflated ego and a 1 dimensional personality MUST be the recipe for success that we are all looking for and by george this trollop has it in spades. How someone without anything remotely approaching a musical bone (never mind gristle or even connective tissue) in their body can get so far in the music industry is up there with other unsolved mysteries that will baffle mankind in the years to come.
Mark Dolby
(2011-02-13 - 10:59 am)They’ll give Stuart Price producer, just to keep up the Take That fest.
BRITS 2012 winners | All-Noise
(2012-01-28 - 3:20 pm)[…] we go again! Last year we ran a post picking our winners for the BRIT Awards, but it fell on deaf ears with the voting panel as they seemingly preferred to pick the winners for […]
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