brit awards
Page: 2
Pop hitmaker Caity Baser, all-female indie rock band The Last Dinner Party and teen pop/soul singer Sekou are the three finalists for the Rising Star Award at the 2024 Brit Awards.
Baser’s “Pretty Boys” reached No. 26 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart in February. She has had three other entries on that chart: “X & Y”; “Feels This Good,” a Sigala feature which also featured Mae Muller and Stefflon Don; and “Dance Around It” with Joel Corry. Baser is also a member of Loud LDN.
The Last Dinner Party’s “Nothing Matters” reached No. 16 on the Official Singles Sales Chart in July. The band, which was formed in 2021, consists of Abigail Morris (vocals), Lizzie Mayland (vocals, guitar), Emily Roberts (lead guitar, mandolin, flute), Georgia Davies (bass) and Aurora Nishevci (keys, vocals).
Sekou was born in Leicester but is now based in London and Los Angeles. He attracted label interest after a video of him performing in a car park went viral. He lists his main influences as Beyoncé, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder.
Previous winners of The Rising Star award, which is now in its 16th year, include Adele, Sam Smith, Florence + The Machine, Ellie Goulding and last year’s recipient, FLO. The award is open to British artists who, as of Oct. 31, had not yet achieved a top 20 placement on the Official Album Charts or achieved more than one top 20 chart placement in the Official Singles Chart.
The shortlist and winner are determined by a panel of music editors and critics from the national press, online music editors, heads of music at major radio and music TV stations plus songwriters, producers and live bookers — those working with new rising talent on a regular basis.
While the roster of winners includes some of the biggest British talent of the past two decades, the show has also missed a few. Lewis Capaldi was nominated in 2019, but lost to Sam Fender. Dua Lipa was nominated in 2017, but lost to Rag ‘n Bone Man.
Here’s a full list of past winners and other finalists for The Brits’ Rising Star Award.
2008: Adele; other finalists: Duffy, Foals
2009: Florence + the Machine; other finalists: Little Boots, White Lies
2010: Ellie Goulding; other finalists: Delphic, Marina and the Diamonds
2011: Jessie J; other finalists: James Blake, The Vaccines
2012: Emeli Sandé; other finalists: Michael Kiwanuka, Maverick Sabre
2013: Tom Odell; other finalists: AlunaGeorge, Laura Mvula
2014: Sam Smith; other finalists: Ella Eyre, Chlöe Howl
2015: James Bay; other finalists: George the Poet, Years & Years
2016: Jack Garratt; other finalists: Izzy Bizu, Frances
2017: Rag’n’Bone Man; other finalists: Anne-Marie, Dua Lipa
2018: Jorja Smith; other finalists: Stefflon Don, Mabel
2019: Sam Fender; other finalists: Lewis Capaldi, Mahalia
2020: Celeste; other finalists: Beabadoobee, Joy Crookes
2021: Griff; other finalists: Pa Salieu, Rina Sawayama
2022: Holly Humberstone; other finalists: Bree Runway, Lola Young
2023: FLO; other finalists: Cat Burns, Nia Archives
The 2024 Brit Awards is making two changes to boost the “representation and inclusion” of its nominees. It is adding a separate R&B category to its four genre awards, and it is increasing the number of nominees for both British artist of the year and international artist of the year from five to 10.
The show, officially dubbed BRIT Awards with Mastercard 2024, returns for its 44th edition on Saturday March 2, 2024.
The Brit Awards introduced four genre awards categories in 2022 — alternative/rock, dance, pop/R&B and hip hop/grime/rap. With the addition of a category focused solely on R&B, there will be five genre awards categories. Eligibility for the R&B award will cover a 24-month period as opposed to the usual 12 months.
At the 2023 Brits on Feb. 11, Harry Styles won the pop/R&B award, over Cat Burns, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa and Sam Smith. The previous year, Lipa won, beating Adele, Joy Crookes, Griff and Ed Sheeran.
For 2024, The Brits will also increase the number of nominees for both British artist of the year and international artist of the year from five to 10. This change, also aimed at improving representation and inclusion, follows extensive consultation within the BRITs organization and relevant industry and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) groups, including the BPI’s own Equity & Justice Advisory Group (EJAG).
“The BRITs is committed to making the show as inclusive and representative as possible,” Dr. Jo Twist OBE, BPI chief executive said in a statement, “The changes to this year’s categories are part of an ongoing process of evolution, and we will continue to review, listen and learn.”
With 10 nominees, British artist of the year and international artist of the year will now mirror song of the year and best international song, which also have 10 nominees. Most other Brits categories have five nominees, except for Rising Star, which has three.
At the 2023 Brit Awards, two of the five nominees for British artist of the year, and four of the five nominees for international artist of the year, were people of color. Styles won artist of the year over Central Cee, Fred Again, George Ezra and Stormzy. Beyoncé won international artist of the year over Burna Boy, Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo and Taylor Swift.
The Brits Voting Academy, responsible for determining the shortlists and the overall winners of the Brit Awards (except for the Rising Star award, which is voted on by a separate panel), is refreshed annually, drawing on updated member data, to ensure relevance and diversity across its participants. The Voting Academy is composed of approximately 1,200 individuals drawn from across the music industry, including artists, managers, media, producers, publishers, record labels and retailers.
In 2024, the Voting Academy will again have a balanced split of men and women and will include a number of members who identify as non-binary or who prefer not to specify their gender, while a quarter of its members identify as Black, Asian or ethnic minority background. The Academy and the voting process is overseen by Civica — an independent voting scrutineer.
Eligibility for the above categories (apart from Rising Star and the five genre awards) is achieved either by an artist album achieving a Top 40 placement on the Official U.K. Albums Chart during the 12-month eligibility period (Dec. 9, 2022–Dec. 8, 2023), or two Top 20 singles on the Official U.K. Singles Chart. To be eligible for one of the genre awards, an artist must have released a Top 40 album or single in the same eligibility period, with the R&B award eligibility achieved over a 24-month period.
For each awards category, Voting Academy members select from a longlist of eligible entries. They will be able to select up to 10 entries in the Artist of the Year categories (UK and International) and Song of the Year (UK and International), and up to five in all other categories.
Mastercard returns as headline partner of The Brit Awards for the 26th year.
“Time Is on My Side,” the title of The Rolling Stones’ first top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 way back in 1964, couldn’t have been more prophetic. Nearly 59 years after that song became a hit, The Stones have become the 25th artist to receive a BRIT Billion Award by the BPI. The […]
The 2024 Brit Awards – officially known as the BRIT Awards 2024 with Mastercard – will be held at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday, March 2. That’s three weeks later than the 2023 show, which was held on Feb. 11.
This will be the second year in a row that the show has been held on a Saturday. The 2023 show moved to the weekend for the first time in Brits history. The show will air in primetime on ITV1 and ITVX.
The 2023 ceremony, hosted by comedian Mo Gilligan for the second year in a row, saw Harry Styles sweep the board, winning in all four categories in which he was nominated: British album of the year, British artist of the year, song of the year (“As It Was”) and best pop/R&B act. Harry’s House won British album of the year six days after it won the Grammy for album of the year. It was the first album to win the top album award at both shows since Adele’s 25 in 2016; the first by a male artist since Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required in 1986.
Wet Leg and Beyoncé were double winners on the night. The show featured performances from the likes of Styles, Wet Leg, Sam Smith & Kim Petras, Stormzy and Cat Burns.
Viewing figures for the ITV1 broadcast peaked at just under 4 million on the night — the highest figure in three years — with a 54% share of 16- to 34-year-olds, the highest in a decade. The individual audience share, at 25.7%, was the highest in more than five years.
Damian Christian, managing director and president of promotions at Atlantic Records (part of Warner Music UK), will continue as chair of the Brit Committee for 2024.
“The move to a Saturday night for the first time proved to be a huge success, so I’m delighted we’ll be back in a primetime slot again in March,” Christian said in a statement. “A Saturday night show helped us lock in our most engaged audience ever, and we’ll be looking to build on that base as we connect with even more fans in 2024.”
Sally Wood will stay on as executive producer of the show for Brits TV. Maggie Crowe, BPI’s director of events & charities, will oversee the overall running of the event. Misty Buckley will return to design the set.
Mastercard returns as headline partner of The Brit Awards for the 26th year. The Brits signed three-year renewal deals with Mastercard, ITV (official broadcaster which celebrated 30 years of broadcasting The Brits in 2023), and The O2 arena.
Billie Eilish has become the 20th artist to receive a BRIT Billion Award from the BPI. The award is presented to those who have surpassed one billion career U.K. streams as calculated by the Official Charts Company. Eilish’s Grammy-winning smash “Bad Guy” has more than 300 million U.K. streams, with six other Eilish tracks topping […]
At 20, Olivia Rodrigo has become the youngest artist receive a BRIT Billion Award by the BPI. The award celebrates artists who have reached one billion career U.K. streams, as calculated by the Official Charts Company. RAYE, 25, had been the youngest artist to receive the honor. Rodrigo was presented the award while in London […]
Charli XCX has a confession to make. When Harry Styles thanked her and her contemporaries during his artist of the year acceptance speech at last month’s Brit Awards, she was nowhere to be found — and now she’s revealing why.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The “Crash” singer appeared on the Thursday (March 2) episode of The Project and shared that her appearance at the Brits was meant to be spicy from the start. “I was just gonna go and cause trouble because I feel like if they’re not going to take female artists seriously, then why should I take them seriously? So I just went to stir the pot, basically,” she recalled on the program.
Ahead of the awards show on Feb. 11, Charli went viral for calling the awards show out for a lack of female representation in the artist of the year category. “I’ve heard a lot of chat about the fact there weren’t enough females in album cycle and that’s why no one was nominated. But I was in album cycle and I had a [U.K.] No. 1 album [with Crash],” she told a reporter on the red carpet.
When Styles accepted the artist of the year award, he used his speech to highlight the women left out of the category. “I’m really, really grateful for this and I’m very aware of my privilege up here tonight,” the “As It Was” singer said during his acceptance. “So this award is for Rina [Sawayama], Charli [XCX], Florence [Welch], Mabel and Becky [Hill].”
According to Charli, she was not mentally present for Styles’ show of admiration during his acceptance speech. “I have such a confession — I was actually under the table at that point…with my friends, we just had too many bottles of champagne and we were doing bad things, so I actually missed that,” she told The Project. “And then Rina, who Harry also mentioned in that speech, was kicking me: ‘Get up, get up! Harry Styles is saying your name!’ and then I was like, ‘Oh that’s so lovely,’ but I missed it. That’s very sweet of him. It’s cool of him to use his platform to acknowledge my point.”
Up next for Charli is a new two-album contract, though she has yet to share what record label she has signed to. Watch Charli talk about her time at the BRITs in the video above.
It’s been nearly two weeks since Sam Smith and Kim Petras danced with the devil at the 2023 Grammys. Now, thanks to a new performance, they’re back in the controversial spotlight.
On Wednesday (Feb. 15), U.K. broadcasting regulator Offcom revealed that Smith and Petras’ performance at the 2023 Brit Awards on Sunday (Feb. 12) had received more than 100 complaints, despite not engaging in the same devilish imagery as their Grammys set.
For the Brit Awards, Sam and Kim took a more literal approach to their “Body Shop” metaphor from the song’s lyrics, with an industrial set, flying sparks and mechanic’s outfits on both performers and their dancers. While it is unclear which parts of the performance received complaints, Offcom received 106 complaints for the 2023 Brit Awards, the majority of which were aimed at Smith and Petras.
The complaint comes after the pair’s highly publicized Grammy’s performance, which also drew plenty of criticism for its use “satanic” imagery from viewers and even a few right-wing politicians, including Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Church of Satan itself ended up weighing in, saying the pair’s performance felt pretty tame.
The ongoing controversy seems to have followed Smith into their daily life — in a viral video posted on Wednesday, Smith can be seen in New York’s Central Park Zoo ignoring a yelling woman, who refers to them as a “pedophile,” “demonic,” and “evil,” while also declaring “Sam Smith belongs in hell.”
Check out what all the fuss was about with Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” performance at the Brit Awards above.
LONDON — The 2023 Brit Awards drew its biggest television audience in three years with 3.9 million viewers watching the show on Saturday Feb. 11, a rise of more than 1 million on the previous year, according to U.K. broadcaster ITV.
The 43rd edition of the Brits, the U.K.’s biggest music awards show, featured live performances from Harry Styles, Stormzy and Sam Smith & Kim Petras, among others, and was staged on a Saturday night for the first time in the Brits’ history.
The move from the Brits’ traditional mid-week slot to the weekend had the positive impact organizers were hoping for with the show — hosted by Mo Gilligan and broadcast live from London’s The O2 arena — drawing an average audience of 3.3 million viewers over its two-hour running time, peaking at 3.9 million. ITV says another 780,000 people watched the show via its on-demand streaming app ITVx.
In comparison, last year’s ceremony was watched by 2.7 million television viewers in the U.K., down from 2.9 million in 2021 — the Brits’ lowest-ever TV audience, according to industry publication Broadcast.
Despite this year’s ratings upturn, Saturday’s show is still the Brits’ third-smallest TV audience, failing to surpass the 4.4 million viewers that watched in 2020, and some distance behind the ceremony’s peak popularity at the turn of the millennium when around 9 million people would regularly tune in.
There are, nevertheless, positives that labels trade body BPI, which organizes the Brits, can take away from this year’s event. Saturday’s broadcast – where Styles enjoyed a clean sweep, winning all four awards for which he was nominated – attracted a 53% audience share of 16-34 year-olds, up from last year’s 33% share, according to ITV.
Music performances and show highlights streamed on the Brit Awards 2023 official YouTube channel have additionally generated around 3 million views in total in the 24 hours after the event, according to Billboard’s calculations.
The Brit Awards’ other digital partners include Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube Kids, Vevo and fan engagement platform Filmily, while Saturday’s show was live-streamed internationally on YouTube. BPI is due to release its digital audience figures later this week.
Brit Award winner Harry Styles brought “As It Was” to the O2 Arena on Saturday night (Feb. 11).
Styles, who won all four awards for which he was nominated, followed up last weekend’s Grammys performance of the Harry’s House hit — which Styles’ dancers said had a technical malfunction, with its rotating stage unexpectedly turning in the wrong direction — with a fresh take at the 2023 Brit Awards ceremony. “As It Was” opened the show.
The star, wearing an open red sequin jacket and showing his chest tattoos, fronted a live band and focused on audience engagement at the Brit Awards. He let the crowd take over on the first chorus, mouthing the lyrics “you know it’s not the same as it was” along with them, and reached down to touch their hands.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
His clean sweep at the Brit Awards included the honors for artist of the year, Mastercard album of the year, song of the year and the fan-voted pop/R&B act. A full list of winners can be seen here.
Check out a clip of Styles’ “As It Was” performance below.