Brits 2010: a prejudiced review from someone who doesn't give a damn

I don't need to tell you, dear reader, that the Brit Awards are the saggy scrotum of the music industry needlessly scratched once a year by panting, sweat-sodden record industry moguls.

Did you cry at the telly screen wondering what had happened to music? You missed the point: it has no relevance to music of any kind. That's a bit like looking at a cat going to the toilet and wondering which Shakespeare play is the funniest.

Last year, I ran a live tweet of the Brits. No such fun this year, I'm afraid, but close observers of this blog will already know what I think of this year's winners.

(Yes, this post is just an excuse to link to other bits of my blog, but there is some fun readings to be had if you get clicky. Here goes... )

Forced castration

Lady Gaga swept up the trophy cabinet in the 2010 Brit awards. I did once recommend that James Blunt become more like Lady Gaga with the help of forced castration using nose hair clippers. She's got a good turn in pop pap, but really, she's a load of old nonsense. I do detect, however, begrudging respect from when I live-blogged the Christmas Number One.

JLS inexplicably won a gong or two. There were literally a billion better singles these past 12 months, although their award-winning track Beat Again did give me something to rake over on this very blog last month ("I need love CPR," isn't the best advice, I mused.) JLS? Really?

Florence And The Machine scooped the best album prize for Lungs, which I don't mind too much despite me claiming last month that "The Source are probably rolling in their grave at her treatment of You Got The Love." In fact, I do mind. I do mind very much. If you own her album, you are crusty and merely six inches from death by old age.

And Kasabian didn't do too badly from the Brits either. Kasabian are a bit like that friend you knew from school who's turned into a bit of a knob but you're still friends and anyway he keeps poking you on Facebook. I like to think my Kasabian tip for the 2009 Mercury actually applied to the 2010 Brits instead.

Jizzle Zizzle

Jay Z has had 99 awards and now the 2010 Brits are one too. I want to slag off the Jizzle Zizzle, but I can't. I loved The Grey Album and I've thrown him at least a couple of bones on this blog before (defending him against Radio 4 in 2006 and the wonderful Jay Z bar chart in 2007). Jay, if you ever fancy writing a guest post on this blog, I'm willing to talk money.

I'm also quite a fan of Dizzee Rascal, the cheeky-faced hip hop Tigger who somehow straddles blantant commercialism and the urban underground without breaking a sweat. As far as this blog goes, I fell in love with Dizzeee Raaaaarskuw's name, I slagged off his Band Aid appearance, I compared Bonkers to Ace Of Bass, and I wanted to work with him because he sounded like Scooby Doo.

Where the Brits really lost their way, of course, was when they declared that (What's The Story) Morning Glory was the best album of the past 30 years. Morning Glory is not even in the top 200. Peter Kay's now infamous comment was right (google it) - I've said before that Liam Noel Gallagher's gob needs plugging.

Net of narkiness

And this is where my crass self-promoting linkage almost ends. Sadly for this blog, there are two winners who have warranted many a mention but somehow seem to have escaped my net of narkiness.

I'm amazed that Lily Bloody Allen has only had a couple of mentions on this website (once in an end-of-year review called Knobs, Cocks and Boils, and a quick namecheck in my Number One Album Chart Death Rant). I'd like to go officially on record to say that if clever lyrics were all that it needed, then people would have liked the Smiths. Oh... wait... I need to formulate a better argument, there.

And the Spice Girls, gawd bless their union-flagged PVC trousers, have never had even the slightest mention on Fat Roland On Electronica, until now. I can't think why.

So, there it is. Cry all you want, cringe to your heart's desire, but when you've already made up your mind about certain artists, as I most evidently have,  the Brits aren't worth the record company PR clause they're written in.

Next year: Flying Lotus sweeps the board at the Brits and I completely change my tone.

Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant

This year, the pop chart will deposit its territorial wastage on another milestone: the thousandth UK number one album.

But before we get all rose-tinted about the South Pacific spending sixteen months at number one, Simpsons-ified versions of Beatles album covers and Orbital showing everyone how a dance music album should be done, let me first spray a phialful of caution in your face.

The album is officially dead.

Kaput. Extinct. Its tongue is lolling. It has crosses for eyes. The album is exactly six feet lower than the soles of your shoes. It is dead.

Simon Cowell's bungalow

This is nothing to do with the much-fondled arguments about unbundled mp3s and the like. Everyone knows great albums are still being made and it will be a cold day in Simon Cowell's bungalow before the general public gives up on the idea of the pop album.

No, this is because the last few number one albums have been beyond horrible.

They have made me want to squeeze out my eyeballs with my buttocks before repeatedly eating and then regurgitating them until I puke out every last one of my internal organs only to use the resulting colon-mush to smother my ears in damp, decaying human insides because, and I repeat, the last few number one albums have been beyond horrible.

Let's look at the evidence. In October, we had yet another number one album from a woman who has the most appropriate surname since James Blunt: Alexandra Burke. This was quickly followed by an emaciated megamouth in red PVC, Cheryl Cole. She may have called Lily Allen a "chick with a dick", but that doesn't make her 3 Words album any less noisome.

If only she had some tunes, it would smell better.

Poor death metaphors

Then in November came the idiocy that was JLS by JLS, in which a doctor tells them they are about to die because of an embarrassing abundance of poor death metaphors in Beat Again ("I need love CPR," they waffle, although performing chest-pumps on a healthy adult can lead to broken ribs and internal damage… let's hope, anyway).

When JLS lost the top spot after one week, there was even more X Factor nonsense with consecutive number one albums from the franchise's out-and-out stars, Leona "Does Anyone Remember Me" Lewis and Susan "Same Nickname As Leona" Boyle. Between them, there's more screech than a box set of Saved By The Bell.

And so, as 2009 reached its disgusting climax to make way for the post-coital cigarette of 2010, who saved us from such X Factor nonsense? Who, dear reader, who?

Sinatra-defiling cheese-monger

Only award-hoovering, Timberlake-mimicking, Sinatra-defiling, Santa-impersonating, cheese-mongering muzak-churning ice hockey bore Michael Bublé. There is nothing crazy about his Crazy Love album. He provokes fan comments such as "thats ridiculace, michael bublé is amaing" (sic). In this Darwinian world, he should not exist: he is rubella / Betamax / Nightmares On Wax's cutting edge.

And yes, Bublé appeared on X Factor.

The next number one album was Sunny Side Up by Paolo Nutini, a six-month-old album of beigeness that makes Travis' The Man Who look like death metal. And if you think his music exists solely to soundtrack montages in Scrubs and One Tree Hill, you're right, it does.

The current number one is by Florence And The Machine and, sweet sweet reader, I don't need to tell you that she's seventeen levels of wrong. The Source are probably rolling in their grave at her treatment of You Got The Love. It least, though, it's a proper album by someone slightly more contemporary than Cliff Richard.

We'll probably get our thousandth UK number one album in May, and it will warrant some column inches from geeky Guardian journalists.

I can guarantee you, though, it won't be as influential as the 100th number one (John Lennon's Imagine) nor as stylish as the first (Sinatra's Songs For Swingin' Lovers). It will simply be a little poot of air in a vast chasm of nothingness because, on the basis of quality number ones, the album is well and truly deceased.

Knobs, cocks and boils: my review of the year

>Cheese of 2006

Wensleydale, as it is every year.

> The most wonderful public figure of 2006

This is a difficult choice; 'wonderful' is not a word I would use to describe most celebrities. Lily Allen was both 'street' and pedestrian, while Chantelle and Pete Doherty were either OMG like sooo cool or complete morons, depending on your take.

We were forced to think about Chris Tarrant and Mark Oaten's sex lives (not together, although they would make a delightful couple). Michael Richards and Mel Gibson destroyed our faith in Seinfeld and Braveheart respectively.

Tony Blair and David Cameron annoy me so much, I want to gnaw the back of my knees off. Paris Hilton, Catherine Tate and The Feeling are also boils on the bottom of life I want to lance with the needle of justice.

In fact, the only public figure that didn't want to make me grate my eyeballs and syringe them back up my nose was Mr Lordi (pictured), whose band stormed to a well-deserved Eurovision success with this glorious number.

>Knob of 2006

I think butter just about edges the victory here, over the bed and door variety.

> Film of 2006

Bond took a menacing turn for the better, but I still can't take those films seriously. I missed any films to do this year's overriding theme of animals and planes, so I lost out on United 93, Snakes On A Plane and any one of the million films about penguins. The Departed, Superman Returns and Children Of Men were pleasant surprises, and A Cock And Bull Story made me giggle lemonade out of my nose, if only for Stephen Fry's impressive "cock!"

My favourite film of the year came right at the beginning, as the turkey and stuffing was still swilling round my insides. From the opening bomb explosion, Munich was unsettling and brutish and shied away from moralising, and thankfully avoided the usual saccherine Spielberg fare.

>Near death experience of 2006

Sankeys Soap in the summer. Yeesh. At least, it felt like near death. I'll tell you over a beer some time.

>Post of 2006

Yes, from my own blog. I really am that vain.

Autechre sell tinny frog-puke enducing cancer machines always seems to come up on Google searches and provoked an anonymous commenter to call my post "a load of sniffle", although the whole post was cheapened by my use of a Dilbert cartoon. My Misadventures In Sound series chronicled my DJing on Refresh FM last Easter, although I never quite finished it. Filter: Beckett & Taylor, Luke Abbott & 000 provoked a respectful mention on a record company website. A little less respectful was It's 3.30am and this is what I think of Da Vinci, which was written in a fury after wasting good sleep over an appalling film. Five things I don't want you to know about me was similarly heartfelt.

I have to plump for the Fatbelt series as my favourite, in particular Fatbelt: notch 3 which saw a whole nation take Saffron the goat to its heart. Well, about three people anyway. My favourite phrase of the year was from that post: "Friday waltzes in to the room like it owns the place." I like that, I must use that again.

Is that smug enough for you?

>Smug git of 2006

Yes, okay, I'll go away now.