http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/brit-awards/11433861/The-Brit-Awards-are-not-fit-for-purpose.html
The Brit Awards? More like the Twit Awards
A mainstream British music award that recognises The Spice Girls and Steps but overlooks The Rolling Stones, Radiohead and Led Zeppelin is not fit for purpose, says Neil McCormick
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The Spice Girls have won a Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music Photo: Paul Grover
10:03AM GMT 25 Feb 2015
61 Comments
What do The Rolling Stones, Radiohead,
Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Clash have in common? They are among
the superstars of British pop culture never to have received a Brit
Award. And they are not exactly alone in being overlooked. How about Ray
Davies and The Kinks, Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music or Morrissey and The
Smiths? Not a gong between them.
Considering this is a mainstream popularity award that was inaugurated
in 1977 (as the Britannia Awards), has been running annually since 1982
(as the BPI awards), and since 1989 as the Brits, it has somehow managed
to bypass many of the biggest talents, most significant artists and
globally venerated stars of British pop history. So extraordinary is the
roster of those not honoured by the Brits, you have to seriously
question who the awards are supposed to be for?
"A Brit Award generally goes to a lot of shrivelled young souls who have not earned it," Morrissey opined in a recent diatribe
against the British music industry’s annual backslapping celebration of
itself. "None are likely to ask 'are you sure I deserve it?', possibly
because they know the reply." For Morrissey, the Brits are just "the
junk propaganda of the strongest labels gathering to share out awards
for their own artists whom they plan to heavily promote." In other
words, like all the Oscar and Bafta nominated films held back from the
general public for release in award season, while being heavily promoted
to judging academies, it is effectively a rigged contest operating as a
future marketing campaign for industry favourites.
Actually I think Morrissey is wrong. I think the Brits is not so much
inherently corrupt as completely dysfunctional. An academy voting system
(which is what the Brits operates) has an inbuilt tendency to flatten
things out, with a bias towards the most popular act of the moment, no
possibility of discussion or debate, no way of correcting faults or
distinguishing novelty acts from original and sustained talent. It is an
awards system without critical bias, relying instead on collective
recognition.
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Many British superstars enjoyed their glory days before the Brits were properly established. However The Beatles, who broke up in 1970, have been honoured collectively and individually multiple times, whilst The Stones (who kept rocking all the way through) have been entirely disregarded. The Outstanding Contribution to Music Award was presumably supposed to correct such incongruities. Among its recipients have been The Spice Girls and Robbie Williams, which might explain why the category has been quietly dropped in recent years. The Spice Girls may have made an outstanding contribution to something, but I can tell you for sure it wasn’t music.
If the Brit awards are really that hit and miss, perhaps it is time for us all to give it a miss. Because this level of persistent omission goes well beyond accidental oversight and suggests a problem that is systemic. A mainstream British music award that runs for over thirty years and can’t find a place for Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Thom Yorke or Morrissey is not fit for purpose. Maybe we should think of another name for the whole farrago. How about the Twits?
