Out of touch with the BRITS

Yes, it's another blog post hovering around age, but I'M NOT OBSESSED!  Right?  Good, just as long as we've got that one clear.

I watched the Brits on Tuesday night.  I've been watching the Brits ever since I was about seven years old. And yes, I would still call myself a music lover.  Going off onto a tangent for a second, why are people so snobby about music?  Duke Ellington said "if it sounds good, it is good" and surely that's the only philosophy you need to live by when it comes to music?  Sod what anyone else thinks.

So anyway...yes, I was watching the Brits, but all of a sudden there's just no magic to it any more.  I wonder if there ever actually was, to be fair, but at least when I was younger I cared about who won, and I knew who everybody was.  I felt unspeakably out of touch this year watching people I'd never heard of win awards (step forward Tinie Tempah, and by the way when I did hear his music something in me just curled up and went to sleep) and the lovely Rihanna endlessly repeating "what's my name" as though she'd just stepped out of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.  And don't get me started on Plan B...he should have stuck to Plan A if you ask me (as long as that plan didn't involve singing anything).  Justin Bieber looks as though someone's crafted him out of candle wax using cut-out pictures of bland catalogue models as a guide...if you cut him open you'd probably find nothing but a circuit board and a few wires in varying colours.  Not that I'm advocating cutting him open, obviously.  Oh, and James Corden is someone I find irritating and unfunny (I am the only person I know of who wasn't enamoured with 'Gavin and Stacey', maybe due to the blatant Essex/Welsh stereotyping which while I understand was done with affection is also just...boring.   I am a bit Welsh and I live in Essex so maybe that's just me getting over-sensitive.  But still...when is someone going to make an Essex-based programme that DOESN'T feature an empty-headed 'tart with a heart' or 'jack the lad' with the obligatory accent?)

I should have known really, when Take That opened the show and Mark Owen sang with a voice that sounded old and shaky...as though he should have been singing the 'Dad's Army' theme (before later turning up to collect an award in what looked like a Jane Norman embellished oversized cardi) that this year's Brits wasn't going to be for me, and that I should also abandon any future viewings for the good of my health. Except I know I'll be back next year moaning about all the same things.

On the bright side, I was glad Laura Marling won something.