- Chris Evans somehow manages to make his comments to Boy George go down EVEN WORSE than Harry Hill's attempt at humour.
- Coldplay having got so good at arena shows that they can even make an album track the best performace yet is almost overshadowed by the disaster that is Chris Martin's hair.
- Kanye West surely isn't actually the first rapper ever to say good things about gay people, Boy George?
- Putting James Blunt's Best Pop Act victory first was surely designed to ensure that things could only get better from there on in.
- At least, if it wasn't for his ultra-smug performance of You're Beautiful being in front of a backdrop of him half naked and kissing swimming girls. Who could have thought that it could be made more repulsive?
- Jack Johnson - a man who released his first album five years ago - wins Best International Breakthrough
- Presenting Arctic Monkeys' non-attendence despite their inevitable Best British Breakthrough win as some kind of principled stand against The Man is nonsesne, they just had a tour scheduled and imagine the protests if they'd cancelled it. Sitting around while having someone else read out their speech is either a better attempt or just trying too hard, not sure.
- Kelly Clarkson's performance of Since U Been Gone lends rather more to the screeching racket theory of its merits than the incredible pop song one, but is an awful lot of fun regardless. Or maybe that's just the anyone-but-Blunt effect talking.
- Best British single is the most distressing category of all, especially being introduced with a spiel about the 'sheer quality of songs in the past year'. Shayne Ward, James Blunt, and a thirty-year old song which is still apparently 'featuring Peter Kay' - I thought that they'd got rid of the Best Video award? - and the nomination for Sugababes is almost more depressing as a reminder of their absence elsewhere. Girls Aloud being left out of Best Pop Act can just about be defended as they hardly had the most mega-successful year, but what more could Sugababes have had to manage to get picked above Blunt and Melua? Also, Goldfrapp must have cause for complaint...
- KT Tunstall's performance in not boring shocker! It may be some kind of black and white stripey nightmare, but it's definitely not boring.
- They have Jack Johnson performing? Really? I could barely even remember what it was like while it was happening.
- The Best Rock Award (see Best Live and Best Group... really, Kaiser Chiefs didn't so much win three awards as the same award three times) is apparently voted for by Kerrang! viewers. Perhaps the fact that Hard-Fi are as rockas it gets explains how Kerrang! has managed to almost catch up with the NME on sales again.
- Green Day win Best International album. Despite the fact that their album was not even nominated after its release last year! The rule of allowing anything from the last 18 (instead of 12) months was supposedly designed to allow inclusion of 'sleeper' albums like, well, Jame Blunt's, but 'American Idiot' went straight to number one and was surely known to all at the time of last year's nomination. Coupled with U2 being nominated for a second year running, the rule just seems to be designed to allow an even greater level of conservatism, as if only selling a few hundred thousand copies just isn't enough to prove your worth, and if no-one has done well enough they can always drag up last year's (although, hey, they did nominate the Arcade Fire!) It's a theme throughout the night as the likes of Lemar and Natasha Bedingfield are nominated or even win depite having done fuck-all in the past year.
- The kids they have on to sing look like they're having fun, but the Gorillaz performance is decidely underwhelming, particularly after the brilliant show put on for them at the Grammys.
- Ditto to Kanye West earlier, but to a much lesser extent... playing a medley and cutting off Diamonds From Sierra Leone halfway through is a great move as there's no need for much of it past forevereverevereverever, but even the seemingly neverending parade of girls and a rather good vocal performance for Gold Digger can't make up for the lack of Jamie Foxx and/or marching bands.
- Coldplay fuel millions of split rumour stories. Again. Yawn.
- Maybe it is like 1996 all over again - Paul Weller's being rewarded!
So there we have it. Awful hosting, not especially great speeches, some enjoyable performances and they did an ok job in general of rewarding what did well in the past year, which after all is pretty much all it's ever been about. The big negatives are the reliance on overly stale releases and the progressing sheer homogenisation of it - having got rid of Best Dance, they seem to be intent on killing Best Pop too and eliminating anything Radio 2/Q unfriendly in general. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the way the music world in general is going, though.
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