Thursday, February 28, 2008

NME Awards 2008: Oh, the Arctic Monkeys won.

The NME awards have been doled out tonight, mostly going to the Arctic Monkeys, as seems to be the way, once again proving that the alternative to the Brits works by, erm, giving the same prizes to the same people.

And they had the Klaxons playing as well.

The backstage blogging from the site is a little toe-curling:

Big Gig VIP Party: Too cool for school

Imagine a backstage party so cool that the hottest model in London and one of the coolest bands from Scotland gets turned away from.

The party is so full that Agyness Deyn and Franz Ferdinand are still queuing to get in.

Is this the NME or the Daily Star? And if they're queuing to get in, how have they been turned away?

Those prize winners in full, then:

Best band: Arctic Monkeys
Best track: Fluorescent Adolescent
Best video: Teddy Picker

Best album: Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
Best solo artist: Kate Nash
Best new band: The Enemy
Best live band: Muse (Muse could probably win this even if they didn't play any gigs for the year)
Godlike Genius: Morrissey scribbled out and replaced by Manics
Hero: Pete Doherty (it's not actually clear for what, although having the chutzpah to flog that bloody journal to publishers might count)
Villain: George W Bush (Like the US electorate, the NME voters turn on him when it's too late to make a difference)
Worst band: The Hoosiers
Worst album: Blackout - Britney Spears
Best international band: The Killers (really? Really?)
Best music DVD: Nirvana - Unplugged In New York
Best live event: Reading / Leeds Festivals (Is it really fair that two separate events have their votes added together? Since it's unlikely anyone attended both - apart from those involved - shouldn't you vote for one or the other?
Best TV show: The Mighty Boosh
Best film: Control
Best website: Facebook (But that's a cop-out, isn't it? It's not like Facebook has any content, it's like being asked to vote for your favourite radio show and choosing Radio 4.)
Best dressed: Noel Fielding (Fair enough. He puts in the hours on it.)
Worst dressed: Amy Winehouse
There are too many awards, aren't there? Way, way too many
Sexiest man: Noel Fielding (Oh, hang on now... he's alright, but not when he turns in profile. You still might, but surely the sexiest man has to work right round the sextant?)
Sexiest woman: Kylie Minogue
Radar award: Glasvegas (this is the NME staff's brightest hope prize)
Best dancefloor filler: The Wombats - Let's all dance to Joy Division
Too, too many categories. It's like prize giving day at the world's most egalitarian schools.
Best album design: The Good The Bad And The Queen (Because Damon Albarn has to win something, just in case)
Best band blog: Radiohead
Best music blog: The Modern Age


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glasvegas are on an NME writer's label...

Anonymous said...

I find it utterly hilarious that the NME now again has a section called 'Radar' (I'm guessing that this is what was catchily called 'On' in the mid-90s). In an entirely different universe, 'Radar' was the section of the paper overseen by Stuart Cosgrove which tried its hardest to bring cultural studies to the masses (and might have succeeded were it not for the political problems and internal conflicts affecting the NME at the time).

Chris Bohn on the obsolescence of the Dock Green lineage, Jane Root sounding far more proto-Blairite than she actually was as controller of BBC2 (and channelling a lot of the Martin Jacques / 'New Times' clique at Marxism Today ideas on popular culture and the Left) ... it says a lot that this title now heralds bands who (whether posh or prole) are entirely a product of the reactionary legacy of the class system and the inverted snobbery it has led to, the antithesis of what the NME was at its best.

Anonymous said...

You forgot the "John Peel Award for Innovation" (urgh) - Radiohead.

Apparently a band putting their music on the internet is still considered innovative.

Marc B said...

I wonder how many people who voted for Britney had actually heard it. If it said "Ladytron" on the cover and sounded exactly the same they'd be lapping itup.

Unknown said...

Glasvegas are very good though.

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