Classical Brits Old Man Face-Off: Sting Vs Paul McCartney

When you become a successful popstar, you'll inevitably come to resent the basic rudimentary nature of pop songs and decide to show everyone how talented you are by masturbating out an unwanted classical album, just like Paul McCartney and Sting.

But Paul McCartney and Sting are still famous enough to prick up people's ears when they record classical albums, and it has been announced that they've both been rewarded by picking up nominations for the forthcoming Classical Brit Awards. Paul McCartney's classical work I Love My Dead Wife More Than The One That's Only Got One Leg and Sting's Lute-Wank A-Go-Go have both picked up nominations in the new Perhaps People Will Care About The Classical Brits If We Nominate Someone That People Have Actually Effing Heard Of Classical Brits category.

It's been a big year for both Paul McCartney and Sting this year, although not necessarily for their musical output. Paul McCartney is still trying to reach a divorce settlement with Heather Mills, the back-flipping monoped who claims that Paul McCartney stabbed her up so much that she needs £10,000 a day from him to cover the cost of tissues she needs to mop up all her abused tears – or something – while Sting has decided to reunite The Police because he's realised that owning seven houses isn't enough for him.

But at least some people have been listening to the musical output of Paul McCartney and Sting – the people in charge of Classical Brit Awards. The Classical Brit Awards, for those unfamiliar few, are much like the pop Brit Awards, except without Joss Stone behaving like a dickhead quite as much – so they're probably not as fun. Anyway, this year the Classical Brit Awards have given Best Album nominations to Paul McCartney – for his classical rumination of his dead wife Linda entitled Ecce Cor Meum; and Sting – for his godawful Elizabethan lute album Songs From The Labyrinth, which we're exclusively blaming as the reason why Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip isn't on TV any more. The Telegraph reports:

Sir Paul McCartney and Sting proved last night that pop music talent is no bar to classical success after both were nominated for a Classical Brit Award. The artists were named in the best album category – only the third example of a "non-classical" nomination in the awards' history. Sir Paul's Ecce Cor Meum is a modern classical work recorded with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Sting's Songs from the Labyrinth features the music of John Dowland – a melancholic Elizabethan era composer – and accompaniment from the Bosnian lute player Edin Karamazov… A spokesman for the awards, which are produced by the British Phonographic Institute, said the only previous instances of a non-classical artist being nominated were Roger Waters last year and the techno-classicist William Orbit in 2001. "It is not unheard of but it is very rare," he said.

Please, please can someone skew it so that Sting wins a Classical Brit Award? There is honestly nothing we'd like to see more than an auditorium of pensioners tutting their disapproval as Sting whips his shirt off and pounds into the final chorus of Wilt Tou Unkind Thus Reave Me? 

Obviously this is nothing more than a transparent publicity stunt constructed in order to get people a) talking about and b) watching the Classical Brit Awards by featuring actual global superstars instead of quiet, serious, scholarly men who treat classical music as a passion rather than a vanity project, but forget about that. Just the fact that either Paul McCartney or Sting stand a chance of winning a classical Brit Award means that there's a possibility that this year's Classical Brit Awards will be the first Classical Brit Awards in history not to feature the words "Well, we're afraid that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart can't be here to collect his award tonight…"

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Sir Paul And Sting In Music Award Play-Off – Telegraph