Read that headline. Read it again. Oasis, Take That and A-Ha won some awards yesterday. Yesterday. Not 12 years ago. But that's the Q Awards for you, folks – where age ain't nothing but an unusually high number.
Of course, picking on the Q Awards for honouring a bunch of irrelevant performers who haven't been good for over a decade is like shooting fish in a barrel. But – since the only vaguely interesting thing to happen at yesterday's Q Awards was Noel Gallagher saying that Liam Gallagher is a bit like a monkey at the zoo – that's exactly what we're going to do.
The Q Awards are usually an exciting afternoon of non-televised awards show fun. Not so long ago Elton John said that Madonna should "fuck off" and be shot – in stark contrast to when he recently said that all photographers should be shot – and last year Yoko Ono sparked a war of words with Paul McCartney over which one of The Beatles rhymed "June" with "Spoon" the most. This year? Well, this year's Q Awards were just about the least exciting in history, all said.
We had a feeling that this would be so when the Q Awards nominations were announced a couple of weeks back. Arctic Monkeys were nominated heavily – but then their Mercury Prize-winning album was voted by NME readers as the fifth-best album of all time a couple of weeks after it was released, so that was kind of expected. In the end, Arctic Monkeys won Best Album and the People's Choice award.
But the real surprise winners at the Q Awards yesterday were Oasis. You know, the band that haven't released a decent album for over a decade and who have now taken to issuing b-sides from when they were good instead of actual new songs? At the Q Awards, Oasis were voted Best Act In The World Today, and Noel Gallagher picked up the Classic Songwriter Award too. That's when he said the only mildly diverting thing of the whole afternoon:
"Liam will be fucking gutted. I guess I should thank our kid for singing all those great songs but he's not here so fuck him. This is all my own work. Liam's gone to the zoo. The monkeys are bringing their kids to go and look at him."
Other winners at the Q Awards – where This Is London notes that the average age of the prizewinners was 41 – included Take That who won the Q Idol Award, whatever that means; A-Ha who won the Q Inspiration Award, whatever that means; Manic Street Preachers who won the Q Merit Award, whatever that means; Jeff Lynne who won the Q Icon Award, whatever that means; The Who who won the Q Legend Award, whatever that means and Primal Scream who won the Q Groundbreaker Award, though presumably not for their rubbish honky-tonk last album.
Oh, and Corrine Bailey Rae won Best New Act. As if we needed to reinforce our point any more.
Read more:
Elder Statesmen, But Oasis Are Still Bad Boys – This is London
Nicolas Silverstone says
Blur should have won something!
Jim says
No, they shouldn’t.