Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Prize: Given
Last night was a big orgy of celebration and awards down in that there London town. The GQ awards probably considered themselves to be the biggest, but as they saw fit to award prizes to Chris Moyles, Jonny Wilkinson and Jamie Fucking Cullum we can pretty safely ignore them. Next up was the Mercury Music Prize which, once again, we entirely failed to predict. This was won by Franz Ferdinand and, as we're rather fond of the band, we were going to do a nice positive piece saying how glad we were that they won and we weren't going to even think about using the fact that they're Glaswegian against them. However, as they've celebrated by chucking around the quote "What this signifies... is an end to this despicable era we've gone through of manufactured pop music,", all bets are off, so instead we'd like to call them a bunch of Art School ponces who are just as much a part of the pop system that they so despise as every other act on the conveyor belt that we call the charts. Winning a contest designed to boost sales of artists at a sluggish time of year is hardly an act of under the counter subversion so, until you learn to accept that, we suggest you bugger off and spend your prize money on Buckfast and heroin. New Scottish Gentry, my arse.
And so, finally, we come to the Popjustice £20 Music Prize for best pop single in the last 12 months. Despite some early false reports, and general expectations, it wasn't won by Girls Aloud, but instead was snatched from beneath Jamelia's nose by Rachel Stevens for her Goldfrappripping referencing number 2 Some Girls. Fair enough, we suppose. It's a good track, but we'd have rather seen Nicola and her Backing Band take the prize. Mind you, we'd rather have seen Phixx take it for Hold on Me but that wasn't even nominated, and surely they need the money far more than Rachel does. They can't even afford the champagne which would make it taste so much better, better.
And so, finally, we come to the Popjustice £20 Music Prize for best pop single in the last 12 months. Despite some early false reports, and general expectations, it wasn't won by Girls Aloud, but instead was snatched from beneath Jamelia's nose by Rachel Stevens for her Goldfrapp
