Brit Awards 2007

I only made it back halfway through, hence no live coverage and the fact that I can't speak with much authority on the whole thing. But it was a bit of a weird one. As long as you realised that Cat Power, Bob Dylan and even Guillemots never had any chance at all, the set of winners was an unusually pleasing one that even had some minor surprises. Lily Allen going home empty handed could be predicted, but Snow Patrol too? Even The Fratellis winning Best Breakthrough can be seen as a lesser of two evils situation while The Kooks still exist.
But on the other hand, the ceremony itself was deadly dull. Russell Brand tried his best, and his Gallagher baiting was quite amusing, but nothing interesting happened, no one had anything interesting to say and the live performances I saw were all totally lacking in spark. The only consequence of being live for the first time in years was that the sound got annoyingly muffled every few minutes - ITV claimed afterwards that this was to cover swearing, but it didn't sound like it.
Now, getting rid of the duet performances of the past at least prevents something like Melua/Cullum's "The Lovecats" ever happening again, but uninspired runs through all the songs that everyone's already heard too many times doesn't seem a great alternative. And as the big finale Oasis sounded like shit even outside of the numerous underwater sections and didn't even play any big hits til after the TV cameras had left them.
So what was worth watching? Nelly Furtado at least seemed very excited as ever to win and got all but shoved off stage as a result, but the only real highlight was Arctic Monkeys continuing to adapt to success in their own unique way in their video acceptance speeches for their two awards. 'We're too busy rehearsing', sour expressions offset by appearance: