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“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.
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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.
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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.
Harry Styles achieved a clean sweep at the 2023 Brit Awards, which were held at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday (Feb. 11). Styles won all four awards for which he was nominated — artist of the year, Mastercard album of the year, song of the year and the fan-voted pop/R&B act. This is even better than Adele’s strong showing last year. She won three of those awards, but lost pop/R&B act to Dua Lipa.
Harry’s House is the fourth album to win the top album award at both the Brits and the Grammys since 1985, when the Brits began presenting an award in that category on a consistent basis. It follows Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required and a pair of Adele albums, 21 and 25.
This is Styles’ second win in three years for song of the year at the Brits. “Watermelon Sugar” took the award two years ago. Styles first won in the category 11 years ago as a member of One Direction for the fizzy “What Makes You Beautiful.”
Styles opened this year’s telecast with a terrific performance of his global smash “As It Was.” This made up for a performance of the song on the Grammys that was hindered by technical issues. “This night has been really special to me and I’ll never forget it,” he said on winning Mastercard album of the year. “I’m so proud to be a British artist out in the world.”
Wet Leg and Beyoncé each won two awards on the night. Wet Leg became the third female-fronted group in a row to take group of the year. Wolf Alice won last year. Two years ago, the award went to an all-female group, Little Mix, for the first time. Wet Leg also won best new artist. The five-member band is the first group to win in that category since Catfish and the Bottlemen seven years ago.
Beyoncé won international artist of the year, beating three other American acts (Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo and Taylor Swift) and Nigerian superstar Burna Boy. Beyoncé had previously won female international artist of the year twice, back when the Brits had gendered categories. Beyoncé also won international song of the year for “Break My Soul,” beating Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” among other songs.
Styles, Wet Leg and Beyoncé all won in multiple categories at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5. Styles took album of the year and best pop vocal album for Harry’s House. Wet Leg won best alternative music album for their eponymous debut album and best alternative music performance for “Chaise Longue.” Bey won four Grammys, enabling her to set a new record as the most awarded artist in the show’s history.
Fontaines D.C. became the third Irish group to win international group of the year. They follow U2, which won in that category a record five times between 1988 and 2001, and The Corrs (1999).
Kid Harpoon, who co-wrote all but one song on Harry’s House, won the 2023 songwriter of the year award.
David Guetta won as producer of the year. This marks the first time someone from continental Europe (Guetta is French) has won the award. Accepting the award, Guetta said, “I’ve been making records for 22 years. To have longevity is such a miracle in what we do.” Guetta has yet to receive a Grammy nomination for producer of the year, non-classical.
Becky Hill won the fan-voted award for dance act for the second year in a row. She was the only one of the 2022 winners in the four fan-voted genre award categories to win again this year.
The 1975 won the fan-voted award for alternative/rock act, beating Wet Leg, among others.
Aitch won the fan-voted award for hip hop, grime, rap act. He beat last year’s winner in the category, Dave, among others.
The awards were hosted by British comedian Mo Gilligan for the second year in a row. Styles, Wet Leg and Smith & Petras performed on the show, as did Cat Burns, Lewis Capaldi, Lizzo, Stormzy and the team of David Guetta & Becky Hill & Ella Henderson. The show also included an encore airing of an Adele performance clip, “I Drink Wine,” from last year’s show. Since Adele didn’t perform on this year’s Grammy telecast, it was good to see her in action again.
The show was not glitch-free. Gilligan introduced Lewis Capaldi as “Sam Capaldi.” The Scottish singer didn’t let it throw his performance of his hit “Forget Me.” Gilligan later apologized for his gaffe on-air, adding: “It just goes to show how strong the drinks are at the Brits.”
Lewis Capaldi took the 2023 Brit Awards stage to perform “Forget Me,” and host Mo Gilligan apparently did just that.
The comedian mistakenly introduced Lewis — whose “Forget Me” was nominated for song of the year at this year’s ceremony — as “Sam Capaldi,” which viewers were quick to comment on Saturday night (Feb. 11) on Twitter.
“I do apologize. I just called him Sam,” Gilligan said post-performance, blaming his error on the drinks served at the show.
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“Guys you know LEWIS CAPALDI gonna make some viral tweet and tiktok out of that sam capaldi thing ahahahahahahahahahah,” one fan predicted on Twitter, while others made memes of Lewis Capaldi’s head on Sam Smith‘s body on the Brits red carpet — which Capaldi immediately shared.
“Sam capaldi x,” Lewis tweeted.
“Forget Me” is the first single from Capaldi’s upcoming sophomore album, Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent. It was first released in September and peaked at No. 58 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart, but blasted to No. 1 in the U.K.
Catch the moment in the quick clip below. See the full list of 2023 Brit Award winners here.