iTunes Music festival upgrades with new interface

The long-running iTunes music festival - an event which mostly exists so the music industry can be gently reminded who is in charge here - is being rebranded this year as the Apple Music festival.

Amongst the acts: Florence and One Direction. 1D playing the Roundhouse is an interesting way to create the maximum number of upset excluded fans in one go.

Glastonbury 2015: When legs snap

The line-up for Glastonbury now has a scary TBA in the Friday night headline slot, with the Foo Fighters pulling out as Dave Grohl's leg is so badly broken.

If it was me, I'd shift Mark Ronson across to the main stage undercard and let Florence headline. In fact, I'd probably have let Florence headline even if Grohl hadn't snapped his leg.

What the pop papers say: NME pulls a surprise

This week's cover band is Wolf Alice.

Last week's cover band was Florence.

That's two female-fronted acts in two weeks.

The last time that happened? November 2003, when Kylie followed The Distillers.

If you don't think Kylie counts, and are looking for the last time two rock acts with female leads followed each other on the NME cover, you'd have to go back to the end of September 1998, for Hole followed by PJ Harvey.

And if you're wondering 'when was the last time two British female-led acts came in subsequent weeks on NME covers', if you stretch a point, November 1986 had Cilla Black followed by Swing Out Sister - but Cilla was there as a TV personality, not a musician.

More accurately, this is the first time the NME has run two subsequent covers of British female-led acts since December 1984, when Siouxsie followed the Cocteau Twins.

The first time in thirty years.

NME Awards 2013: A Rolling Stones awards

Two prizes for the Rolling Stones, including the claim that The Rolling Stones were the best live band in action last year. It's long been suggested that there's little difference between the NME and the Brit Awards; this year, the NME has actually gone further and become more backward looking and conservative than the official industry-endorsed prize giving.

Even when the prizes are going to acts formed this side of the millennium, it feels like a drag. Biffy Clyro might look like the best band in the world if you're finding a bunch of tax exiles a source of onstage thrills; Amy Lee and Matt Bellamy might have taken the Prom King and Queen prizes of "hottest" at any point in the last ten years.

Florence And The Machine is the best solo artist, which might be true if your electorate consists entirely of people who choose soundtracks for mobile phone company adverts.

It's not often you look at One Direction getting a dis and find yourself thinking 'actually, the high ground from which you're throwing rocks at Harry Styles isn't especially high, people'.

The winners in full:

Best British Band
Winner: Biffy Clyro

Best International Band
Winner: The Killers

Best Solo Artist
Winner: Florence + The Machine

Best New Band
Winner: Palma Violets

Best Live Band
Winner: Rolling Stones

Best Album
Winner: The Maccabees – 'Given To The Wild'

Best Track
Winner: Foals – 'Inhaler'

Dancefloor Anthem
Winner: Calvin Harris feat. Florence – 'Sweet Nothing'

Best Video
Winner: Arctic Monkeys – 'R U Mine'

Best TVShow
Winner: 'Fresh Meat'

Best Festival
Winner: Reading & Leeds

Best Music Film
Winner: 'Crossfire Hurricane' – Rolling Stones

Best Reissue
Winner: Blur – '21'

Best Twitter
Winner: Alana Haim, Haim (@babyhaim)

Best Book
Winner: Mike Skinner, The Story Of The Streets

Music Moment Of The Year
Winner: Olympics opening ceremony

Hero Of The Year
Winner: Barack Obama

Villain Of The Year
Winner: Harry Styles

Best Small Festival
Winner: Festival No.6

Worst Band
Winner: One Direction

Best Fan Community
Winner: Muse

Best Film
Winner: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Hottest Man
Matt Bellamy

Hottest Woman
Amy Lee

Gordon in the morning: Didn't they do well?

Here's something to take on the chin:

FLORENCE Welch's wardrobe must be full of old tuxedos, tap shoes and dodgy top hats.

She admitted that before she started flouncing around in white frocks she used to dress like Sir Bruce Forsyth.

Did she really?

“I was like a cross-dresser but really it was just out of laziness. At times I looked like a cross between Annie Hall and Bruce Forsyth."

Not really, no.

Still, it hasn't stopped them cracking open Photoshop:

Did I say Photoshop? MSPaint, presumably. That's so poorly done there must be someone on the art desk taking the piss, right?

NME Awards 2012: Kasabian are the best band ever

The consensus seems to be that it was Florence And The Machine's night at the NME awards last night. She only won two prizes, but if you stare very hard at those, you can try and pretend that this never happened:

Best British Band: Kasabian

Yes. Really.

There are some signs that this year, although it might not be exactly alternative, the NME awards haven't just gone to winners who would have been in with a chance of getting the same prize at The Brits. Florence's best track and best solo is still quite a timid choice, but The Horrors best album would never have been echoed at the O2. And whle The Vaccines were shortlisted for equivalent of best new band on both lists, at the Brits they were clearly making up the numbers while at the NME they took home the prize.

If Muse won the Most Dedicated Fans category, how come they lost their traditional Best Live Act to the Arctic Monkeys, eh?

It's not a list that suggests rude health for either the music world or the magazine, but it's probably the least worst winners in full for a while:

Best British Band: Kasabian

Best International Band: Foo Fighters

Best Solo Artist: Florence + The Machine

Best New Band: The Vaccines

Best Live Band (supported by Carling)
Winner: Arctic Monkeys

Best Album (supported by HMV)
Winner: The Horrors - 'Skying'

Best Track (supported by Fender)
Winner: Florence + The Machine - 'Shake It Out'

Dancefloor Anthem (supported by NME Radio)
Winner: Katy B - 'Broken Record'

Best Video (supported by NMEVideo.com)
Winner: Hurts - 'Sunday'

Best TV Show
Winner: 'Fresh Meat'

Best Festival
Winner: Glastonbury

Best Film
Winner: 'Submarine'

Best Music Film
Winner: 'Back And Forth' - Foo Fighters

Greatest Music Moment Of The Year
Winner: The Stone Roses reunite

Best Reissue
Winner: The Smiths - 'Complete Reissues'

Best Book
Winner: Noel Fielding - 'The Scribblings Of A Madcap Shambleton'

Hero Of The Year
Winner: Matt Bellamy

Villain Of The Year
Winner: Justin Bieber

Worst Album
Winner: Justin Bieber - 'Under The Mistletoe'

Worst Band
Winner: One Direction

Best Album Artwork
Winner: Friendly Fires - 'Pala'

Best Band Blog Or Twitter
Winner: @LadyGaga

Best Small Festival
Winner: RockNess

Most Dedicated Fans
Winner: Muse

Hottest Male
Winner: Jared Leto, 30 Seconds To Mars

Hottest Female
Winner: Hayley Williams, Paramore

Still, it appears the people who still buy the NME believe Kasabian to be the best band in the world.

There's also an example of the structural problems the brand is facing. At the foot of the winner page is this:

To read all about the awards and all the shenanigans from the night, pick up next week's issue of NME, which is on UK newsstands next Wednesday (March 7) or available digitally.

How does that help anyone, never mind the NME? It means that the day this week's issue came out, effectively it became outdated (it's a Sex Pistols front cover, so it's decades out of date, but you get my point.) Online visitors don't get any coverage, save for a slight blog, when they'd expect it, and instead are told to wait an entire week, then switch off their computer and go to the shops. And meanwhile, anyone interested in the "shenanigans" will find other newspapers and websites more than happy to fill them in. (Gordon Smart has done a page, for example.)

So, in effect, the NME has spent a fortune filling up other people's gossip pages, rendered this week's issue redundant and next week's dedicated to an event which will have been so far in the past it might just as well be an interview with John Lydon. Even if you're not going to embrace digital first, shouldn't you at least hold the prizes the day before you go to press to close the gap a little?

On the other hand, if Kasabian win best band, why would you be in any rush to tell people?

Gordon in the morning: An exotic world

There's some tatty pap snaps of Florence out of the machine in Brazil on Gordon's pages today, which means Gordon has to do one of his say-what-you-see bits of text underneath to try and explain why what might look to the outside world of a seedy invasion of the privacy of a woman in a bikini is actually a proper news story:

She took a right soaking playing underneath this waterfall in Brazil.

It's such an exotic setting you're half expecting[...]

Yes? What, Gordon, is the acme of exoticism? What is the most exotic thing that you can think of? Choose well, my son, for the photo you have is of a woman dancing in a waterfall in South America, which sets the exoticism level quite high. Obviously, you'll have to come up with something more exotic than that. Go on, Gordon, tell us how exotic the photo is:

It's such an exotic setting you're half expecting the Timotei shampoo model to appear and join in the fun.

I'm... I'm not even sure "the Timotei shampoo model" is even a category of thing, you know. It's not like, say, an American Apparel model which has crossed into being the sort of person who you can picture even if you don't know who they are or what they're modelling.

Jedward redeem their entire existence

I have ground my teeth, finer and finer, over the year as Jedward - or the Two Chicos - have refused to go home.

But their reaction to Florence and The Machine during a 'songs of the year' thing at the Guardian almost makes me forgive them:

Yeah, she's good. We've got two signed albums at home. And yes, it's a really, really good song. Universal's really pushing her to be really big. To be this big global artist. Will she meet their expectations? No.

That's quite amusing. Let's just hope they don't go and say or do something so irritating it sets my teeth grinding again...

John and Edward Grimes (Jedward) star in Nintendo's new TV ad campaign and are ambassadors for Dragon Quest IX on the Nintendo DS.

Excuse me, I must to a dentist.

[via @andymalt]

Florence And The Machine go all 3D

Grazia are doing one of those oh-so-2008 augmented reality specials, focusing on Florence And The Machine:

An iPhone app will unlock further special features, including the ability to “spin Florence around by blowing into your iPhone and take a picture of her in any location”, said Bauer.

That really doesn't sound like behaviour appropriate for a grown man. Not in public, anyway.

Hit with a writ better than none? Machine, Dance settle

After Gang Gang Dance asked Florence out of Florence Welch's Amazing Musical Machine how it was that Rabbit Heart sounded so much like their House Jam, the two parties have come to a legal settlement.

Liz Bougatsos sounds almost as if she doesn't quite believe Welch's claims that one song was a tribute to the other:

"If she [Welch] would have mentioned it in the beginning, in the press, which we never saw, that would have definitely made a difference," she told BBC 6 Music. "And if she was speaking of an homage at that point, that would have helped as well."

Still, everyone's happy now that royalties are being assigned and we've all suddenly remembered that, oh yes, it was a homage and not a lifting.

Brits 2010: The element of surprise

You know one of the great things about the Brit awards? It's that moment where you discover the supersecretsurpise duet.

Admittedly, they always turn out to be something of the nature of Mika and The Gossip slapped together like the front of '78 Escort cut and shunt on the rear end of a '87 Metro. But at least it's a surprise, right?

The last thing you'd want to do would be issue a poorly written press release detailing who, and what they'll be doing and... oh...:

As the most thrilling night in music looms, UK record labels’ body, the BPI can reveal that Dizzee Rascal and Florence + The Machine performance at the BRIT Awards 2010 with MasterCard will be made available for download on the iTunes Store (www.itunes.co.uk). For the first time in BRITs history, audience members and viewers watching LIVE on ITV1 will have the chance to download their very own souvenir of the 30th anniversary show, and a donation will be made to the BRIT Trust from every sale of the single until 18 March 2010.

The most thrilling night in music? It's not even the most thrilling night in industry awards shows held at Earls' Court.

Still, I'm sure all the labels who pump a fortune into advertising albums during the ITV show will be delighted that the bloody organisers are going into competition with them.

Oh, it's going to be a mash-up called You've Got The Dirtee Love. I'd have held out for Bonkers With A Hit, myself.

"Liam Gallagher is known for his caustic put-downs"

Contactmusic is delighted by the wit of Liam Gallagher. He, they remind us:

is known for his caustic put-downs

So let's prepare ourselves for an onslaught of wit as Gallagher turns his attention to Florence Welch, shall we?

Liam quipped:

Ooh, it's going to be a quip...

"I'm not having someone with ginger hair making music."

Oh, ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, please, give me a moment to pull myself together.

Just in case this brilliant witticism is a little too clever for you, it's a reference to the fact that Florence Welch has red hair, and that... um...

Liam Gallagher is 36 years old.

He does actually manage to be unintentionally funny when he suggests no band has taken Oasis' place:

"People are far off being the best band in England or the best band in the world. There are some good bands out there but there's no one claiming that mantle."

Obviously, there's the humorous belief that Oasis were some sort of pinnacle of achievement in the first place, which is onyl made better by Gallagher's strange belief that the vacuum they've left behind is so huge, it means that there isn't even a best band any more; as if the very concept of being the best band has been abolished in the same way some shirt numbers get retired in sports.

Brits announce this year's ill-starred duet

It's become a tradition of the Brit Awards - the slapping together of a duet between two artists which doesn't even manage to scrape together looking good on paper.

This year, the names drawn out the hat at random are Florence And The Machine and Dizzee Rascal. It's expected to follow in the footsteps of The Gossip & Mika and Klaxons & Rihanna. So prepare to say goodbye forever to the pair of them.

Nominations are being unveiled tonight on ITV2. Fearne Cotton will be holding up a microphone and trying to think of something to say.

Downloadable: Florence And The Machine / The XX

You'd have to hope there isn't too much of a "you were the future - once" element to having the XX remix Florence And The Machine. It does sound good, though - RCRDLBL are doing the hosting, and the track is You've Got The Love. I wonder who'll be adding a bit of bright-eyed lustre to The XX by remixing them next year...

UPDATE: This is available (as of October 2014) on SoundCloud

Gordon in the morning: Mercury rising

Yesterday, readers of Gordon's column were sent to the bookies almost certain of a Mercury win for Florence And The Machine, mainly - admittedly - on the strength of 'giving Gordon an excuse to print a sexy picture':

FLORENCE WELCH is the front-runner to scoop glory at tonight's Mercury Music Awards.

And if she does bag the 20 grand prize for 2009's best album, I suspect that by the end of the evening she could be pulling a similar pose to this - crawling around London's Grosvenor House Hotel.

So, this morning Sun readers must be... apparently not at all surprised at the outcome:

The Sun's Something For The Weekend section said last week that Speech was the "most deserving" nominee.

Still, regardless of Speech's win, Gordon knows where the moral victory is, and marks the occasion with a large, sexy photo of Florence Welch in a short leather skirt.

Elsewhere, Yoko Ono popped up at the GQ "man of the year" awards. You can calibrate how well-judged these prizes are by considering that they believe Guy Ritchie to be filmmaker of the year and George Osbourne to be politician of the year (a view which even David Cameron would double-take.) Yoko's appearance was yet another part of the grinding publicity for the Beatles Game ("was quite a coup for the magazine publishers"), but she ended up being asked to talk about Take That:

Beaming Yoko said: "I love Shine. I know most of their greatest hits. They're a great British band."

It might sound like faint praise to you, but she didn't have to write any of the names on her hand, and she didn't go "that one from the adverts with Alan Hansen in - that's one of theirs, isn't it?"

Gordon, though, senses high praise:

And the feeling's mutual.

Mark said: "It's amazing that Yoko thinks that about our music. It is an honour to accept an award from her."

"I quite like some of their greatest hits" and "it's nice that Yoko quite likes our greatest hits". Mutual love-in, isn't it?

By the time this has been processed for an article teaser, it comes out as this:

Yoko Ono: TT are new Fab 4

JOHN Lennon’s widow is a big fan of the man band – naming Shine as her favourite track

Or at least the one that somebody whispered in her ear before she went on stage.

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Saturday night

The simplicity of Esser vocals don't really stand up to not being able to hear the music properly, like being perpetually in the position of a busy room falling quiet just as you say "... and so I had to hit him with the shovel", but, oh, you could eat Esser with a spoon. Of course, it was all shoved away in a corner of Press Red, but it makes it all feel a bit more special.

Florence And The Machine used to be hidden away, too, but look at this, this year - a 6Music pick, no less. Pity the set sounded a bit ropey and overwhelmed, and only really came alive with a Candi Staton cover at the end.

It's turned out to be impossible to avoid both Reggie Yates and Kasabian, so I finally wound up having to watch Reggie get Cerys Matthews in to keep him company in the hovering sky-studio. Matthews put her shoes on the table, which can cause bad luck, but I guess she figured that being interviewed by Reggie is probably one of those situations from which there is no down. Matthews, somewhat oddly, appeared to be wearing exactly the same blazer-and-no-trousers outfit that Edith Bowman was wearing on Friday evening. One presenter at a time is frugal, BBC, but making them share clothes is just going too far. Will Mark Radcliffe be waiting for Zane Lowe to finish with the trousers before he can go on to BBC2?

If, by the way, Mark Radcliffe seemed genuinely bemused by the idea of going on to do a programme without any Neil Young in, tonight he's going to be totally Jack Wooleyed, as it appears the BBC won't be able to show any of Bruce Springsteen's headline set at all.

Rate 08: Christmas selection box: Florence & The Machine

Florence & The Machine - Kiss With A Fist

The affectionate punch

Florence And The Machine's debut single, Kiss With A Fist came out on Monday and is already fetching ten quid second hand. It's also attracting some raised eyebrows, prompting a defence of the song on the band's blog:

leona lewis's bleeding love isn't actually about her bleeding.
this isnt really about punching someone in the face. thank you and goodnight.

Judge for yourself (not Leona Lewis):