The Q Awards took place yesterday in London, and they managed to be as predictably controversial as ever. Not because of the winners – although we choked on our grilled chabichou when we found out that KT Tunstall managed to win anything – but because of all the tedious rock showboating that went on.
Grabbing the headlines this year – Yoko Ono, who implied that Paul McCartney wasn’t very good at writing songs; and Liam Gallagher, who said the word "plantpot" to one of Coldplay.
Last year, Elton John set the Q Awards insult bar pretty high by accepting an award by saying:
"Madonna: best fucking live act? Fuck off. Since when has lip-synching
been live? Anyone who lip-synchs in public on stage when you pay £75 to
see them should be shot. That’s me off
her fucking Christmas card list, but do I give a toss? No."
So
the young contenders of 2005 knew that they had their work cut out for
them. Well, we say ‘young’, but this is the Q Awards – the only awards
ceremony with a ‘You must be at least this wrinkly to enter’ policy on
the door. Quite how whippersnapper Charlotte Church got in is
beyond us, although she did seem to be dressed in her Nan’s clothing,
so maybe that helped.
But back to the insults. Yoko Ono kicked off proceedings while
accepting a special award for John Lennon (CDs), with this fine effort
directed at Paul McCartney:
“John was very human. In
the middle of the night he would say, ‘They always cover Paul’s songs,
they never cover mine’. I said to him, ‘You’re a good song writer, it’s
not
June-with-spoon that you write. You’re a good singer too. Most
musicians would be a bit nervous about covering your songs’.”
Then,
when Coldplay won the award for Best Act In The World Today, Liam
Gallagher (CDs) was left spluttering and fuming in his trademark witty style,
not aware that his shtick hasn’t been funny for ten years:
"Knobhead! Come on, have a pop. You’re a plantpot. That lot are all wankers. Fuck ’em."
Bearing
in mind that voters only really had the choice of Oasis, Coldplay, REM
and U2 for all the categories, here’s the full list of Q Awards winners:
Best new act: James Blunt (A man with a voice that makes us want to cut off and bury our ears)
Best track: Black Horse and the Cherry Tree – KT Tunstall (‘KT’ actually stands for ‘Krashingly Tiresome’)
Q classic song: Waterloo Sunset – Ray Davies (The best song about a manky shit-filled river ever)
Best live act: U2 (Best tiny midget pretending to be best mates with the Pope, more like)
Best album: Don’t Believe the Truth – Oasis (That’s the best album of the year, folks. Even though we can only remember two songs from it)
Best producer: Gorillaz and Danger Mouse – Demon Days, Gorillaz (We like Danger Mouse, but Damon Albarn usually makes us want to go happy slapping)
Q birthday honour: Michael Eavis (Birthday honour? He won an award because it was his birthday?)
Q icon award: Jimmy Page (A man whose career can be summed up best by the word "widdlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddly")
Q classic songwriter: Nick Cave (Ok, good call. Maybe these awards are getting back on track…)
Lifetime achievement award: The Bee Gees (…obviously not)
Best video: Feel Good Inc – Gorillaz (Not the video where a cartoon dances around Shaun Ryder‘s massive decapitated head, disappointingly)
Best act in the world today: Coldplay (We can’t write anything about this because we’re crying too many disappointed tears)
Outstanding contribution to music: Paul Weller (Paul Weller has a new album out this week. Coincidence?)
Innovation in sound: The Prodigy (What innovation is that, exactly? The innovation of getting Juliette Lewis to shout a song about balloons?)
Q legend award: Joy Division (Joy Division were OK, but not actual legends. The award should have gone to King Arthur. Or John Legend)
Q inspiration award: Bjork (Inspiration? What
does that actually mean? We can’t think of a single singer who we can
listen to and think "oh yeah, Bjork’s obviously a big inspiration")
Q special award: John Lennon (Because he’s the special-est person ever, presumably)
Read more:
Old guard of British music recognised at Q Awards – Guardian
[story by Stuart Heritage]