James Blunt & KT Tunstall Win Some Kind Of Award

The Ivor Novello awards are world-famous for recognising and awarding the very top percentile of British songwriters, the writers of classic, thrilling pop music that will be remembered for decades. Or so we thought.

Somehow there must have been some kind of mix-up this year, though, because it seems like the Ivor Novello award panel have decided to reward the songwriters who have soundtracked a bunch of arseholes driving their people-carriers to Ikea on Saturday mornings. Because that's the only logical way that James Blunt and KT Tunstall could have possibly won their Ivor Novello awards last night.

Now, KT Tunstall and James Blunt do deserve to be given awards - awards for a) being a girly man with the voice of Terrence And Phillip singing mopey idiot songs that nobody admits to liking and b) being a frying pan-faced woman with a pair of stripey trousers and a voice like Phil Mitchell shouting Pogues B-sides into a bear's cave. And these awards would ideally have pointy ends covered in poison and would ideally be 'awarded' straight into the necks of KT Tunstall and James Blunt via some kind of elaborate blowpipe.

Basically, we're saying that KT Tunstall and James Blunt did quite well at the Ivor Novello awards last night. And we're not that impressed.

KT Tunstall's 2005 tortu-hit Suddenly I See won the Ivor Novello Song Of The Year award, while James Blunt took home the Ivor Novello Most Performed and International Hit Of The Year awards for You're Beautiful. KT Tunstall accepted the award with grace and appreciation, and to get an idea of what this quote sounded like last night, why not try punching yourself in the throat a few times for a rough approximation of the KT Tunstall trademark voice:

"I've been writing songs for 15 years and it's amazing to just sit in your room and do something that you like doing and it turns into this. It gives you a kick up the arse to carry on."

Meanwhile, James Blunt tried out a preemptive strike as he collected his award, knowing full well that people were going to be openly shitty about him, before he went home to slide the award up Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's mimsy, or whatever the hell was does with these things:

"I'm going to be rude about this before anyone else has the chance - thank you so much for the award for most overplayed song."

Luckily, KT Tunstall and James Blunt weren't the only performers to be given Ivor Novello awards last night. Gorillaz won the Songwriters Of The Year award, Kaiser Chiefs won the Best Album award and New Order won the Best Outstanding Song Collection Award, which we'd be hard-pushed to disagree with. Honourable mention should go to mental old Classical Ivor Novello award winner Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who seems to dislike KT Tunstall just as much as we do. Collecting his award, Harrison told the crowd:

"Why is your music so loud? You must all be brain-dead. This isn't me against pop music, I didn't know so many cliches existed as I've heard in the last half-hour." 

Still, things could be worse - 50 Cent could have been given a songwriting award. Oh.

Read more:

Tunstall Single Tops Ivor Awards - BBC

[story by Stuart Heritage]