This year in 2020, The Brit Awards celebrate its 40th anniversary with comedian Jack Whitehall presenting, and various exclusive guests hosting and performing. Whitehall says a touching tribute towards friend and former Love Island host, Caroline Flack who recently passed away, and that was about the only thing he didn’t joke about.
Kicking off the night was Mabel’s performance of ‘Don’t Call Me Up’, a song that’s sold over one million copies. Shortly followed by rising star Lewis Capaldi singing ‘Someone You Loved’ and even though I’ve involuntarily listened to this song over a thousand times, (like the rest of the UK), this performance made the goosebumps appear.
Lewis Capaldi is the evening’s biggest winner, taking home two Brit Awards. Rappers, Dave, Stormzy, Tyler the Creator, indie band Foals, American singer Billie Eilish and Celeste also won one award each. 30 years to the day her mother Neneh Cherry won two of her very own Brit Awards, Mabel wins Best Female Solo Artist too.
Having been speechless after winning his first award for New Artist of the Year - when Capaldi comes back on stage a second time, to collect his second award for Best Album - he comes on with a bottle of Buckfast in hand, and actually talks - but probably wishes now that he didn’t. He clarifies the song isn’t about his Love Island star ex and is in fact about his late Grandma. He goes on to say, “I hope ITV don’t contact her to be on a reality TV show... Thanks to Mum and Dad for... making love? And thanks to my Grandma for… dying?”
Best International Female Solo Artist is a tough category because there is so much talent within the nominees, such as Ariana Grande, Lizzo, Lana Del Ray and Camilla Cabello who have all had extremely successful albums, but despite the odds, Billy pulled it out of the bag. A very well deserved first Brit Award for the young star. It was warming to see how humble Billy is as she thanks the other nominees for inspiring her, crediting them for her success. It is sad to see that at only eighteen, and being so successful, Billy feels hated, however it is great to know that performing at The Brits boosted her confidence and restored her faith in herself as a human being and as a performer. How did they decide on the winner for this category?!
As far as the performances go… boy are we in for a TREAT. Billie Eilish, performs bond theme ‘No Time to Die’ for the first time ever live, accompanied by her brother Finneas, Johnny Marr and Hans Zimmer. It was as haunting as you would expect. Harry Styles sings ‘Falling’ and then Lizzo steals the show with a mash up of ‘Cuz I Love You’/Truth Hurts’/ ‘Good as Hell’ and ‘Juice’, thank God she did it before she decided to
down a wine glass full of neat tequila!
Not to mention Stormzy and Dave’s powerful performances too. An even bigger treat than Lizzo’s performance was Stormzy’s incredible six song mash up featuring Burna Boy. The performance features, ‘Don't Forget to Breathe’/‘Do Better’ / ‘Wiley Flow’ / ‘Fortune Teller’ (J Hus)/ ‘Own It’/ ‘Anybody’ (Burna Boy) and closed off with ‘Rainfall’. Stormzy is assisted by an entire gospel choir, and quite literally three stages worth full of dancers, and performers. Who hired an entire film cast? But it worked! The amount of performers on stage really helped to emphasize a sense of empowerment and unity. A real special performance. When everybody is stood singing and dancing in the rain to Mary Mary ‘Shackles’ at the end, I wanted to get the shackles off my feet and dance with them too!
Politics appears to be a big talking point this year, with both Dave and Stormzy expressing their political views within their performances. Dave – who won the Album of the Year for his record
Psychodrama – adds a verse to his song ‘Black’, where he calls Boris Johnson a “real racist”. Dave also criticises how the British media treats Meghan Markle in comparison to how they treat Kate Middleton.
He raps, “And if somebody hasn’t said it, equality is a right, it doesn’t deserve credit. If you don’t wanna get it, then you’re never gonna get it. How the news treats Kate versus how they’re treating Meghan.”
Dave also pays tribute to Jack Merritt, a young lad who died in the London Bridge terror attack in 2019, and those still affected by Glenfell. A real simple, yet powerful performance. Dave. Wow.
Closing off the Brit Awards in the right British way, the best dressed man in the room, Rod Stewart is joined by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to sing ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ and then finishes, reuniting with Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones to play as The Faces, to end the show performing, ‘Stay With Me’. A true British old school rock send off, the way it should be at The Brits.
This Brit Awards will go down in history for its performances, with Lizzo’s energetic mash up. Dave’s powerful words, and Stormzy being joined by what seemed like a film cast worth of performers on stage. It definitely won’t be forgotten about.
This year’s nominations were criticised for being dominated by men, but to the contrary I believe that the Brit Awards was very diverse, and the male categories were incredibly strong because there’s a lot of amazing male artists out there at the moment, doing great things - Stormzy and Dave proved that. The show had a variety of different artists, male and female who all showed empowering performances and won their well deserved awards.
