hecklerspray has a challenge for you.
Think of something more boring than James Blunt. Go on. Try it. Emptying a coalmine with a teaspoon, perhaps? Maybe watching a nine-hour documentary on fourteenth century Hungarian cloud formations? Or perhaps just being locked in a cupboard with only Ryvita biscuits to eat until the day you die?
Of course, there’s always the chance that you’re actually… sigh… a fan. God knows – enough people are.
Which would explain his status as favourite to sweep the board at the godawful Brit Awards next month.
Ah, The Brits. Less an awards ceremony and more a straw-poll of what Mondeo drivers have been listening to these last twelve months. To be honest, little James Blunt (CDs) couldn’t be any more Brit-tailored if he stuck on a bob-styled wig and called himself Dido.
Blunt – now used as utterly appropriate rhyming slang within certain circles – is nominated for both Best British Male and Best British Album (rather misleadingly titled Back To Bedlam – an LP that sounds like it should be a deranged thrilling mish-mash of guitars and insane jump-in-the-air breakbeats yet actually sounds like your mum doing the hoovering).
Blunt isn’t the only snooze-maker on the shortlists, however. He’s joined by equally-as-atrocious contemporaries KT Tunstall, Natasha Bedingfield, Shayne Ward, Robbie Williams and ‘Kwik-Save Blur‘ The Kaiser Chiefs. hecklerspray will be offering betting odds on them all nearer to the time – which is quite frankly the most fun you could have with that list of names outside of procuring a machine gun and marching on down to Britannia towers.
Oh, okay. So decent acts like The Arcade Fire and the Gorillaz make an appearance, but do you honestly think that’s going to make a blind bit of difference? Honestly? Cwoss your ickle heart and hope to die?
Course not.
As sure as the once-great NME Brat Awards will inevitably descend into public school Pete Doherty-worshipping, so the Brits will forever herald Jamie Cullum worthy of praise and piss-awful whiners The Bee Gees deserving of a ‘lifetime achievement’. The only difference being that the Brits were never actually any good in the first place.
February 15th, people. Watch and weep. And – remember – this is what happens when housewives are allowed to buy CDs in Waitrose…
Read More:
Singer Blunt Heads Brit Shortlist – BBC News
[story by C J Davies]