The annual Brit Awards took place tonight at London’s iconic O2 Arena, with Emile Sande and Ben Howard the big winners of the night; both collecting two awards each.
With live performances from Muse, Mumford and Sons, Taylor Swift, Ben Howard, Robbie Williams, One Direction, Emile Sande and a world exclusive from Justin Timberlake, the awards have been deemed as “my favourite one” by host James Corden. The Brit Award for 2013 was designed by artist Damien Hirst.
Opening the show, Muse played their massive track ‘Supremacy’, with flashing lights and fantastic vocals from frontman Matt Bellamy; the show was given an explosive opening.
The first award of the night was ‘Best British Female’, with nominations of; Emile Sande, Paloma Faith, Bat For Lashes, Jessie Ware and Amy Winehouse, Emile Sande picked up her first award of the night.
The next award saw the ‘Best British Band’ award presented, with a strong group of nominations including; Mumford and Sons, The XX, Muse, One Direction and Mercury Prize winners Alt-J, Mumford and Sons came out on top picking up their only award of the night.
‘Best British Male’ saw Ben Howard pick up his first award of the night, an impressive win to say the least, with a nominations group including Calvin Harris, Plan B, Olly Murs and Richard Hawley.
With live performances from Robbie Williams and Justin Timberlake in-between the awards to keep everyone entertained, with Robbie Williams wowing the crowd with a fantastic stage production for his massive 2012 smash hit ‘Candy’.
On to ‘Best International Female’, a surprise winner to many with Lana Del Ray scooping the award ahead of Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift and Cat Power.
Moving into one of the major awards of the night ‘Best Live Band’, anyone of the five superb bands could have been worthy winners. Coldplay scooped the award for the incredible scenes they created on their Mylo Xyloto stadium tour last summer, winning the award over Mumford and Sons, Muse, The Vaccines and the iconic Rolling Stones who reformed to play two massive shows at the O2 Arena in late 2012.
One Direction made a live performance of their Comic Relief single, One Way Or Another before the awards continued to flow. ‘Best British Single’ was the next award in the limelight with a host of nominations; Alex Clare – ‘Too Close’, Coldplay and Rihanna – ‘Princes Of China’, DJ Fresh ft Rita Ora – ‘Hot Right Now’, Emile Sande – ‘Next To Me’, Florence and the Machine – ‘Spectrum’, James Arthur – ‘Impossible’, Jessie J – ‘Domino’, Rizzle Kicks – ‘Mama Do The Hump’, Labrinth and Emile Sande – ‘Beneath Your Beautiful’, Robbie Williams – ‘Candy’, Olly Murs ft Flo Rida – ‘Troublemaker’, Rita Ora ft Tine Tempah – ‘RIP’, Stooshe – ‘Black Heart’ and Rudimental’s smash hit with John Newman with ‘Feel The Love’ but the winner was Adele’s huge hit for the latest James Bond film ‘Skyfall’. Adele wasn’t able to attend the awards but had made a video recording of her speech, which included a dig at the awards after her controversial cut off at last years awards by saying “I wont keep you too long because I don’t want to interrupt the best album speech at the end of the night, but I love you all”.
With just three of the normal awards left to go, next up was ‘Best International Band’ with Dave Grohl collecting the award for winners The Black Keys over The Script, Alabama Shakes, FUN and The Killers.
Performances from Taylor Swift with her hit ‘Troublemaker’ before arguably the best performance of the night from big winner Ben Howard with ‘Only Love’ came in between the awards. The winner of the next award Frank Ocean for ‘Best International Male’ received the biggest cheer of the night, an impressive win ahead of Bruce Springsteen amongst others.
With a performance from Mumford and Sons of lead single from their latest album ‘Babel’; ‘I Will Wait’, it set the perfect tone for the biggest award of the night.
Finally we had hit that award, the one award every artist dreams of winning, ‘British Album Of The Year’. With an incredible group of five nominations, all of which would of been deserving of the win, proving that British music is in a great position at the moment. The nominations for the award came from: Alt-J with their Mercury Prize winning album ‘An Awesome Wave’, Plan B’s ‘Il Manors’, Mumford and Sons follow up to their astonishing first album, ‘Babel’, Paloma Faith with her album ‘Fall to Grace’ all couldn’t put up a fight with the winner, picking up her second award of the night was Emile Sande with her album ‘Our Version Of Events’.
There were also two new awards introduced at this years Brit Awards, with One Direction picking up an award for ‘Global Success’ while there was a ‘Special Recognition’ award for the charity War Child.
The awards was closed by big winner Emile Sande who performed latest single ‘Cloud’ before finishing the show with her smash hit ‘Next To Me’.