Is it still a case of #BritsSoWhite British male solo artist David Bowie - winner Craig David Kano Michael Kiwanuka Skepta British female solo artist Emeli Sande - winner Anohni Ellie Goulding Lianne La Havas Nao British group The 1975 - winner Bastillle Biffy Clyro Little Mix Radiohead British breakthrough act Rag 'N' Bone Man - winner Anne-Marie Blossoms Skepta Stormzy Critics' choice Rag 'N' Bone Man - winner Anne-Marie Dua Lipa British single Little Mix - Shout Out To My Ex - winner James Arthur - Say You Won't Let Go Clean Bandit - Rockabye Coldplay - Hymn For The Weekend Jonas Blue ft Dakota - Fast Car Calvin Harris ft Rihanna - This Is What You Came For Callum Scott - Dancing On My Own Tinie Tempah ft Zara Larsson - Girls Like Alan Walker - Faded Zayn - Pillowtalk British album of the year David Bowie - Blackstar - winner The 1975 - I Like It When You Sleep... Kano - Made In The Manor Michael Kiwanuka - Love and Hate Skepta - Konnichiwa Global Success Adele - winner Icon Award Robbie Williams - winner British artist video of the year One Direction - History - winner Adele - Send My Love (To Your New Lover) James Arthur - Say You Won't Let Go Clean Bandit - Rockabye Jonas Blue ft Dakota - Fast Car Coldplay - Hymn For The Weekend Calvin Harris ft Rihanna - This Is What You Came For Little Mix - Hair Tinie Tempah ft Zara Larsson - Girls Like Zayn - Pillowtalk International male solo artist Drake - winner Bon Iver Leonard Cohen Bruno Mars The Weeknd International female solo artist Beyonce - winner Christine and the Queens Rihanna Sia Solange International group A Tribe Called Quest - winner Drake and Future Kings of Leon Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Twenty-One Pilots
At the 2015 Brits, after the same old same old run out of pop acts and British indie noisemakers, the lights went up (not very far up ,but up) on a stage filled with what looked like a hundred men in...
The Brit Awards need to take responsibility for #BritsSoWhite
At the 2015 Brits, after the same old same old run out of pop acts and British indie noisemakers, the lights went up (not very far up ,but up) on a stage filled with what looked like a hundred men in black tracksuits. Two flame throwers blasted up front, and Kanye West started on ‘All Day’. The eagle-eyed might have noticed the cream of British Grime in the front of the pack - Skepta, Stormzy, Novelist, and Krept and Konan among others. To paraphrase Wiley, this was a party that UK Grime had never been invited to, and Kanye kicked the door down.
This year’s dry, pasty-faced, de-clawed Brits had nothing to rival last year’s grime invasion, in fact it was hard to spot any black faces amongst the nominees, the attendees, or the winners.
Can anyone tell me why Aphex Twin was nominated for Best British Male this year? One album in at number eight on the charts for the grand total of four weeks, not making a dent in the singles chart and yet pushing out Tinie Tempah, Naughty Boy, MNEK and Lethal Bizzle? What about Foals getting into the Best British Group category with one album which peaked at number three, when perpetual chart botherers Little Mix, who have also charted in America, are left out? That’s not to mention Grammy nominee Lianne La Havas who has been the poster girl for the #BritsSoWhite hashtag after being snubbed. To nominate Laura Marling, who again has had one album chart at number 8 in the eligibility period, and Amy Winehouse who basically made it in posthumously through a rules loophole, shows a huge measure of disrespect to La Havas, and makes the British music industry look ridiculous.
Since Stormzy called the Brits out on the lack of diversity in the nominees and they grovellingly issued a statement about ‘looking into’ more BAME voters, apologists have been shrugging and citing eligibility cut offs like they were really keen to include more BAME acts but were somehow stymied by the rules they themselves created.
Even if we’re buying the ‘transparent’ voting process, the Brits need to be held accountable for other choices they made on the night. If they were so apologetic about Stormzy missing out on eligibility by one week, why not ask him to come and perform Shut Up? The musical tribute to David Bowie was nice, but did it also require a five minute ‘special’ Brit acceptance speech from Gary Oldman and Annie Lennox? I personally think David Bowie would have hated every second of that self-indulgent rambling speech which listed every synonym for ‘legend’ in the dictionary and was cloyingly desperate to evoke emotion in the boozy crowd of record industry blerts. That time could have been used to showcase British urban music instead if the Brits were so concerned about diversity.
Some of the biggest selling singles, and the music that will come to define 2015, were overlooked from start to finish. If the charts were dominated by OMI and ‘Cheerleader’, ‘See You Again’ by Wiz Khalifa, and ‘Trap Queen’ by Fetty Wap, then you wouldn’t have known it from the International Male category. Not even Jason Derulo made it in! If Fleur East’s earworm ‘Sax’ was one of the most played records on music radio, it couldn’t compete with Catfish and the Bottlemen’s number 10 placed album and complete lack of top forty singles - she didn’t even get into the Breakthrough category. Krept and Konan might have had a breakout album and single in 2015 - but would the Brits voters have even known that? The Brits are keen to tell us that the eligible nominees are picked from the top 1000 selling singles, but they are less keen to tell us how many of their voting panel are white. (There is a petition here for them to release the info).
In their month long advertising campaign for the live broadcast the Brits have been trying to push the idea that their show is ‘controversial’ and exciting, showing clips of Madonna falling on her arse and whatnot, but as long as the whitewashing continues, they are getting more and more stale, less relevant, and at times, downright disrespectful.
[M]ost of my peers, who are journalists on the voting academy, reassure me that whilst they nominate black and/or grime artists every year, their nominations never make it through, unless it’s a non-threatening white act like Professor Green. They also told me that most of their academy are much older, middle class, music stalwarts who, while great music influencers in their own rights, are totally unconnected or engaged with the British black music scene. To these voters, grime and hip-hop is an alien [art] form they just don’t understand and therefore won’t vote for.
#BRITsSoWhite: UK Music Industry Dismissive of Its Own Black Artists | The Mary Sue
