Grime is ghosted and George Michael gets a sendoff: what we learned at the Brits

Grime is still a problem for the Brits

There was no grime winner, despite Kano and Skepta being nominated for best album (they were unfortunate to be up against David Bowie in the year following his passing). More shaming was that neither Skepta nor Stormzy could win the breakthrough act award, but were beaten by Rag’n’Bone Man, a white artist melding black styles. And the post-watershed broadcast of Skepta’s Shutdown – in which a good portion of the song’s audio was muted, though not the reading out of the complaint about the grime takeover of Kanye’s Brits appearance in 2015 – was ruined so thoroughly as to be an embarrassment. Presenter Romesh Ranganathan’s gag – that he’d been invited because the organisers had heard he listened to grime and wanted to make amends for last year – rang sadly true. Matters were compounded when A Tribe Called Quest’s win in the best international group category – a genuinely surprising victory – was brushed away in seconds after Drake’s win was announced. It made the Brits look as if black music was an afterthought.

The George Michael tribute was almost perfectly judged

No industry bigwigs; no talking heads on his artistry. Instead, his oldest friends and colleagues, Andrew Ridgeley, Pepsi DeMacque and Shirlie Holliman spoke movingly of their memories of the young George and his determination and delightfulness. The moment when first Pepsi and then Shirlie broke down was almost unbearable, and Ridgeley’s conclusion was perfectly dignified: “I loved him, and in turn we, and you, were loved.” What followed was less perfect. Chris Martin is clearly a very decent man, and Coldplay are unfairly scoffed at. But he was simply not a good enough singer for A Different Corner, one of Michael’s very best songs, and the moment where the pair were technologically shoehorned into a duet was a bit buttock clenching.

A change is as good as a rest

Ant and Dec are, as we are constantly told, consummate TV presenters. But the thought of them presenting their 329th consecutive Brits was a little wearying. The original plan to have Michael Bublé present this year fell through because his son has liver cancer, and he felt – rightly – that being with his family took precedence over being with the great, the good and the gruesome of the British music industry. And while Dermot O’Leary – whose middle names are Safe, Pair, Of and Hands – and Emma Willis didn’t exactly radiate chemistry, is was nice to be without the sometimes irritating faux self-deprecation and so-bad-they’re-good-no-actually-they’re-just-bad gags of Ant and Dec. Of course, the hyperbole gets on one’s nerves – everything has to be incredible, brilliant, fantastic – but there was enough sobriety not to make it cloy. That said, opinion was divided in the Guardian office as to which of the pair was holding it together.

There wasn’t a lot of politics

You might have thought that at this point in time, some musicians might have something to say about the state of the world. But, no. For the most part there was the usual cavalcade of thanking label bosses, managers, parents and “everyone who believed in me”. Matty Healy of the 1975, a man who – thankfully – can’t see a platform without taking to it, told viewers that was now the time not to be silent: artists are told “stay in your lane when it comes to social issues, but if you have a platform – don’t do that”. Mind you, had Anohni won the British female solo artist award, there’s a fighting chance her speech would have covered all the world’s political woes and lasted three hours.

The 1975 showed some daring

I’ve been championing this band for a few years now – doubtless to your irritation – so it was the rare Brits win I was pleased about. More to the point, though, was that their performance was what you might hope for from an awards show – especially in the televised iteration, where the damning criticism they have received was flashed up on the screen – PRETENTIOUS, ANNOYING, BUBBLEGUM MANUFACTURERS – in a similar way to how it appeared in their video for the song they performed on Wednesday night, The Sound. They will always be a divisive group, but they are not afraid to provoke, and that is at least part of pop’s job.

2016 was music’s saddest year

It would have been easy for the Brits to have mentioned just the names of the biggest stars to have died in 2016, but the montage of names that flashed up was a reminder of the depth of music losses, and it was wonderful to see even those who would have despised and despaired of this industry bunfight acknowledged for their contribution. This will be the only time the names of Alan Vega and Vi Subversa will be mentioned at the Brits. And how wonderful – if that is the right word – that they could be brought, fleetingly, to the attention of the wider world.