Music awards – CHUNES

By 25782697 on Music awards tagged #BritAwards, #Brits, #EDM, #Music, #UKMusic- Leave a comment

BRIT Awards 2024 – a night of iconic Kylie moments, RAYE’s triumph and a sprinkle of drum and bass!

It was certainly a night to remember for one artist in particular, of course I’m talking about the unbelievably talented Raye! The singer songwriter won a record-breaking total of six BRIT’s last night, including the coveted ‘Album of the year award’ for her debut album, ‘My 21st Century Blues’. Raye then silenced anyone calling her undeserving with an incredible medley performance that was undoubtably the best of the night.

The history making singer began with emotive ballad ‘Ice Cream man’, a brave song choice as it follows her experience with sexual assault coming from someone in the music industry and how that affected her. The beat then picked up as she went into ‘Prada’, a song mixed from her verse on DBE’s ‘Ferrari Horses’ before ending with fan favourite ‘Escapism’, accompanied by London based choir, Flames Collective.

This year, the Brits finally recognised the UK’s love of dance music. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware they love to showcase dance pop acts such as Dua Lipa but it was nice to see performances representing the Uk’s fastest growing genre, drum and bass, with legendary duo Chase and Status bringing the rave to the stage. The DJ duo that won ‘Producer of the year’ award performed alongside Becky Hill who delivered a flawless vocals to their single ‘Disconnect’. In their winning speech, the pair said: “tonight we are proud to represent drum and bass music, thank you so much”.

However, it didn’t stop there with electronic music collective Jungle performing their hit song ‘Back on 74’ which included a breath-taking dance sequence as well as the ‘Best Dance Act’, Calvin Harris, also performing live with Ellie Goulding to sing ‘Miracle’.

And how could we forget the queen that is Kylie! She seemed like the real celebrity amongst celebrities with all the nominees up singing every word during her show. The iconic singer was unsurprisingly the subject of almost every between-award interview producing some hilarious moments. The lucky host, Roman Kemp, managed to get himself a ‘kiss’ off the Australian star before downing a shoey together – bizarre yet weirdly iconic.

Although, one of the best and most heartfelt moments of the whole show was the interaction between Raye and host Clara Amfo. The host and former radio presenter awarded Raye with ‘Songwriter of the year’ telling viewers that she was Raye’s first ever radio play a whole decade ago. The two women embraced which was so genuine to watch, highlighting how far both of them had come to get to that moment. To me, this really highlights the importance of having hosts who have also made their way up through the music industry and media world, because it doesn’t get better than that. I found this Tweet made by celebrity interviewer, Simon Harkness, and I couldn’t agree more.

Please let me know what you thought of the awards show, hopefully next year I will be there reporting myself!

29 Jan

By 25782697 on Music awards tagged #BritAwards, #Britnominations, #Brits, #Music, #UKrapwith 1 Comment

The BRIT Award Nominations 2024 – My Thoughts.

Record-breaking RAYE dominates with seven well-deserved nominations!

The talented R&B singer-songwriter has made Brit award history after becoming the first ever artist to score seven nominations in one year, as the Brit Award Voting Academy reward her incredible year after a tough decade under major record label.

After getting a lot of backlash from the lack of female representation in last year’s categories, this year’s nominations are a very different story with strong with solo women or all-female groups making up more than half of the overall nominees! This is a definitely a better look that last year.

RAYE’s nominations came in all the noteworthy categories with nods for best artist, song of the year as well as best pop and R&B artist. However, it wasn’t always this easy for Raye, these nominations followed a tough earlier career for the singer as she spent years being made to feature on songs she disliked and was unable to release her own written albums after signing to record label Polydor at just aged 17.

The 26-year-old singer from south London is getting a lot of love right now with mainstream media outlets such as the Telegraph naming her “The most exciting singer since Amy Winehouse,” and aside from perhaps Adele, I struggle to disagree with that statement as Raye has continued to go from strength to strength since the release of her self-written songs. After seeing Raye live at Boardmasters festival last year, I cannot stress how talented she really is as despite poor weather and a pretty rubbish daytime slot, she still managed to command the crowd creating an incredible listening experience with a live band and remarkable vocals.

The record breaker uploaded a heart-warming video on social media sharing the moment she found out about the awards. In the video RAYE goes from laughter and disbelief to tears in a matter of seconds she said: “SEVEN nominations, are you okay? Shut up. Wow. This is deep. Seven nominations? That’s crazy”.

She also was one of five nominees in the coveted best album category with, My 21^st Century Blues, an ambitious and exciting collection of songs that took listeners on an empowering yet emotional journey. The category is well-represented by a range of genres from indie with Blur’s Ballad of Darren to UK rap heavyweight, J Hus with Beautiful and Brutal Yard. Little Simz’s vulnerable and experimental NO THANK YOU is also nominated, the album explores her mental health and highlights her anger towards the music industry. The final nominee for best album is Scottish group Young Fathers with Heavy Heavy and despite the misleading title the album has a refreshingly light and joyous sound to it. I think it will be a difficult choice for the BRIT academy but for me it must be between RAYE and Blur for the win.

The Dance Act category brought some familiar faces with Calvin Harris, Fred Again.. and Becky Hill. Barry Can’t Swim is also amongst these famous faces having had a huge year playing his jazz-infused groovy samples across the world this summer. The final nominee was Romy, one third if The xx, which is a great choice as her solo album Mid Air was one of the best complete electronic albums of the year.

British rap was well-represented in all the big categories with another big year for Central Cee and Dave with their collaboration project Split decision leaving both the London boys with multiple nominations. As well as J Hus whose comeback after 3 years has produced him with 4 nominations.

An exciting but shocking nominee was jazz drummer and composer Yussef Dayes, who was nominated for best new artist and best alternative artist. A jazz nominee is a very rare yet pleasant surprise and I’m glad that the BRIT academy jury are not just looking at mainstream music and are appreciating an underrated and extremely talented jazz performer. I hope this continues in the next few years especially in the new artist categories.

There you have it! For once I’m not overly upset at one of my favourite artists being unfairly snubbed. I think the nominations well-represent the incredible year of British music in 2023. Please share your thoughts and if you agree.

Check out this playlist full of all the nominees!

30 Jan

By 25782697 on Music awards tagged #BritAwards, #Britnominations, #Brits, #CentralCee, #CharliXCX, #Florenceandthemachine, #FlorenceWelch, #Fredagain, #GeorgeEzra, #Harrystyles, #LittleSimz, #Stormzy- Leave a comment

EVERYTHING wrong with the Brit award nominations!

With the Brit Awards soon approaching, let’s shine a light on this year’s controversial nominations…

Last year, the Brits swapped the gendered categories for more progressive (at least we thought) non-gendered categories to be more inclusive. Despite the attempted step forward, they ended up taking three steps as the coveted ‘Artist of the Year’ submissions are all in fact MALE.

The artists that are nominated include: Central Cee, Fred Again.., George Ezra, Harry Styles and Stormzy. Although each artist is great in their own right, I believe some are stronger than others. Harry Styles who has become a worldwide pop superstar is a justified pick and I predict he will win every award he is up for. And despite both being relatively new artists, both king of electronic music Fred again and rapper Central Cee have gone global finding huge success in the US.

Regardless of Stormzy’s incredible past projects, I don’t think he had an extremely standout year in 2022. His newest album, ‘This is what I mean’ although beautiful, for me fell a little flat especially in comparison to the work of Little Simz or Loyle Carner bringing a more refreshing sound. Lastly, George Ezra seems like an odd pick for a Top 5 artist of 2022 as his third album ‘Gold Rush Kid’ sounds extremely similar to the other two with no real excitement or change.

Due to the all-male list not representing the talent and diversity of the UK music industry, here are some of the women I believe deserve to be in this category and why:

Florence + The Machine: Her 2022 album ‘Dance Fever’ earnt her a fourth UK Number 1. Emotive lyrics collided with blissful choruses to create a powerful record. Singles such as ‘Free’ and ‘My Love’ standout with a new refreshingly euphoric sound. The combination of exciting new music, excellent singles, and Number 1 charting in 2022 surely should have earnt Florence and the machine a BRIT nomination.

Little Simz: At the very end of the year, she released a surprise album ‘NO THANK YOU’. A complex project where she airs her frustration with the music industry and choosing to become an independent artist. Her unique voice, flow and lyricism highlight that she is a force to be reckoned with and if not nominated for artist of the year she should have been considered for the Hip Hop/ Grime category

Charli XCX: It has been an exciting year for Charli, as she reached number 1 on the UK charts for the first time with her 5^th studio album ‘CRASH’. It is an incredibly fun, experimental, and well produced album that really embodies the genre of pop. Charli also released successful singles including ‘Hot In It’ and ‘Beg For You’ and collaborated with a variety of noteworthy artists such as Rina Sawayama, Tiesto and Caroline Polachek.

Brit award academy judges when deciding the best artist of 2022: (52) Name A Woman (Billy on the Street) – YouTube

Another extremely disappointing thing to see was the category of ‘Best pop/R&B Act’ being full of ONLY pop acts. Personally, I think it’s insulting to the genre itself as well as any British R&B act as they don’t even get a look in being paired with UK’s most POPular genre. The nominees were Cat Burns, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and Sam Smith, all exceptional pop artists, although I find it surprising that they couldn’t add a single R&B artist despite three out of five not releasing an album in 2022. British singer songwriter and producer MNEK took to Twitter to share his frustration on the matter. He said: “OK this is silly now. we get it. UK industry doesn’t know what to do with R&B but there’s enough R&B artists to have their own category at LEAST”.

My last bone to pick (I know there’s been a few) is with the ‘Best Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Act’ as in my opinion they have added Stormzy and Dave perhaps due to popularity reasons rather than purely being based off music completed in 2022. For example, Dave had a huge year in 2021 with an extraordinary album, winning him Best Hip Hop act as well as the most prestigious award – ‘Album of the year’ – which was completely well-earned. However, in 2022 Dave only released 2 singles with only ‘starlight’ gaining success, is this enough to take a spot in this category?

Personally, I would love to see Knucks being recognised for his incredible talent in this category and possibly even ‘Album of the Year’ as ‘ALPHA PLACE’ is such a strong album with great storytelling, and unique style.