And the award goes to… Duffy! Duffy! And Duffy again! This was the scene presented to us at this year’s BRIT Awards ceremony. The Welsh songstress simply raked in award after award. But did she deserve it?Flicking through a copy of last month’s NME, an article just so happened to catch my eye. It was an opinion piece by the resident ‘Mr Angry’, Mark Beaumont. He is a man who “spouts off and bangs on”.
With the title “Get on your BRITs? No way!”, Mr Beaumont expressed his views on the BRIT Awards ceremony. He thinks that it makes a mockery of the music industry, is based entirely on sales figures rather than talent, and is, quite frankly, a waste of time.
Everything he said was his opinion. A harsh one but an opinion nonetheless and, when I was reading it, I couldn’t help but think it was a really good example of my blog subject.
There are tons of different awards ceremonies all over the world. Some are highly publicised, like film and music awards, and some are generally unknown, such as the Industrial Awards, which celebrate the talents of people like joiners and plumbers.
Music awards ceremonies are one of the highly publicised ones and there are so many of them. There’s the aforementioned BRIT Awards, then there is the NME Awards, the Nationwide Mercury Prize, the Ivor Novellos, the American Grammy Award, the MTV Europe Music Awards, the list goes on.
The one thing they all have in common is that they celebrate musical talent. But each one is different, because none of them celebrate the same type of genre. This is why people tend to appreciate some awards ceremonies and not others.
Mr Beaumont, in his angry article, said: “The BRITs are an awards ceremony for people who don’t like music, voted for by people who don’t care about music”.
Personally, I think this was an unfair comment to make. Mr Beaumont is an NME writer so he wouldn’t be keen on the type of music that is honoured at the BRIT Awards. I mean, when was the last time you saw Leona Lewis or Take That on the cover of NME?
They are pop artists and the people that read NME don’t generally like that type of music. They are more partial to a bit of White Lies or Kings of Leon. There are people out there who like pop though and they are interested in those artists/bands. They even like the manufactured acts from TV contests like X Factor. These are the people who watch the BRITS and think it’s good.
Just because the music genre is different from that of the NME awards, doesn’t mean it is bad music. It’s just an alternative style.
Mr Beaumont was not forced to watch the BRITs. He didn’t need to read about them. If he didn’t like it, he should have just turned it off. Any normal person would have.
