Well it's not about me disliking the winner. I guess they're okay. It was more the reasoning behind the choice of winner that made me feel that the last Mercurys were less than credible.

But like I say it's just personal opinion, and yes, it's a good thing that lesser known artists can be seen.
But by that same token you could say that as Bat For Lashes are at this year's Brits it somehow makes the Brits good.

And you're not going to if they're being completely overshadowed by prescriptive media favourites and prevented from breaking through.
You're simply not going to even know about the diversity that exists because the chances are that you simply won't get to hear them.

Umm...Mika isn't a former pupil of the Brits school. Just so you know.

Rubbish once they censored it, hardly rock & roll is it.

Hmm, I'd probably have nominated Sound of Silver (LCD Soundsystem) and No Shouts, No Calls (Electrelane). The Klaxons' album should also have been nominated. It's very good, probably in my top 10 of last year.

Oh isn't he? I assumed he was. Well most of those girl singers are anyway I think Lilly Allen and Joss Stone are the exceptions when it comes to female singers who have been nominated recently.

I read somewhere that even Simon Cowell hates The Brits and thinks its the worst night of the year, which pretty much tells you how crappy and fake it is. It certainly doesn't have the clout it used to have.

I wonder if it will be axed and replaced by something else?

I know it exists, I even started a blog about it ....and I can come up with some artists who I think are better than some of those nominated. I was asking if the other people criticising the nominations could as well or if they're just full of hot air . I've seen 3 mentioned so far; Amy MacDonald, Electrelane (and M.I.A. from me) .

Agree about Amy MacDonald. I know it was suggested that her comments about the English and football may have worked against her, but then again KT Tunstall labelled the Germans as "f***ing Nazis" and is due to her singing ability is rightly nominated.

A bit of advice for Amy is that the English have a referee (Howard Webb) and two assistants (Darren Cann and Mike Mullarkey) going to Euro 2008. The Scots have only got a 4th official (Craig Thomson) going. So they can't even beat us on that one.

Back to the Brits and I think it is a total mixed bag. Many artists, such as Mika, Newton Faulkner, Take That, Leona, KT Tunstall deserve nominations. On the other hand for a woman of 40 I can't believe the tone of Kylie's voice, although she's a darn sight better than some "artists". Always disliked rap music and Kanye, and Jamie T and Kate Nash sound so poor and alike I wouldn't be surprised to bump into them in a wedding chapel.

I really rate M.I.A too. I wanted her to win the Mercury in 2005.

Simon Cowell, a man who forces the talentless wannabes of X Factor on us ever year, thinks the Brits are bad and that means they're crappy and fake???? Have you seen X Factor? That is the epitome of crappy and fake!

The Brits are crap - but I'd rather they were on the TV than X Factor.

M.I.A. is fantastic, I love her stuff. She's way too original and talented with musicality to be nominated for a Brit award. If Kate Nash wins anything I will genuinely never watch the show again.

Can't believe Velvet Revolvers 'Libertad' didn't make the cut for Best International Album. Slash's best guitar work in about 15 years, and it's completely ignored by the award ceremonies. Disgraceful.

Any other suggestions of British artists that should have been nominated from all those people who hate the nominations?

Were artists like Kaiser Chiefs, Mark Ronson and Mika really the best Britain had to offer last year? Please tell me it ain't so....

There is to many adverts, I just flick on and off it now!

Its lost what it had. Its not the same now, there are so many other music ceremonies focusing on their own genres.

Excitement, Passion, Energy.... 3 words that you won't find describing the Brit Awards.

What singer or band with any of the above would want to appear at that circus anyway? let em get on with it, at least it keeps them all out of the recording studio for bit.

I find awards like the Brits and Baftas are a complete waste of time .

The Brits are more focused on the producers and not the artists, well that's what it seemed like back in 1989 when most of the winners had the SAME producers.

Never liked the Brit awards, to me it's meaningless.

Outstanding achievement is potentially objective. You need sales and to have done something substantial. Something substantial with no sales is a stealth achievement. The Spice Girls obviously qualified on sales,records broken, becoming an international success, and breaking the mould of cloned boyband domination of the. charts. The fact you may not like them was more than balanced by the fact that millions did.

After that any award is pretty subjective so you will find people being given awards for being creative ( a meaningless term as any new song is literally creative) or novel (often meaning wierd) or credible (often meaning written under the influence or whilst psychologically disturbed) You can give those awards to anyone from whatever niche depending on what enough of eth right people like and whether they have a big record company supporting their claim or they appeal to the the industry as the "credible" act to sell of the moment. Its pretty pointless arguing who deserves it or watching who got it when they all probably have a claim.

Meanwhile Led Zeppelin are selling out their one night show and the Spice Girls are making probably 6 or 7 times as much as Leona Lewis and selling out Madison Square Gardens as well as the O2...

thenetwork babe, are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that if Led Zeppelin put on the same number of shows as the Spice Girls, they wouldn't sell them out?

If you are, you're living in cloud cuckoo-land. Led Zeppelin's concert was massively well recieved and they even needed a ballot just in order for the tickets to be fairly distributed. All this from a band that started their career back in the late 60s! Will the Spice Girls remain as critically successful so many years down the road? No. They'll be a novelty act for discos, just as they are now.

Let's not also forget that Led Zeppelin write their own music, play their own instruments, and didn't need to make ridiculous personas for themselves in order to become successful.

So in conclusion, Led Zeppelin > The Spice Girls.

Indeed. Spice Girls fans are deluded arn't they?

Led Zepplin would kick the Spices backsides if they ever announced a new world tour. Didn't they have a lottery for fans to get tickets for their most recent show and something like two million applied? I mean two million people from every corner of the globe FFS! The Spices had to cancel half of their shows due to lack of interest.

Oh and I'd like to point out there were very few cloned boybands around when the Spice Girls first came along, that was later. So they didn't 'break the mould' at all. There was only Boyzone around at the time because Take That and East 17 had split by then and the likes of Westlife, Five and Backstreet Boys came along later.

No awards are prestigious. Awards mean nothing. What matters is that people are listening to and enjoying the music.

As a show, The Brits is sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

on the whole i agree with you - Its all one big industry w@nk fest as far as i am concerned. maybe its a good thing then that amy macdonald and duffy (never heard of either like) arnt getting such an embarrassing collection of nominations / awards.

What's happened to the Urban category? Has it disappeared as there can be no reason to give it to Lemar this year

Lost last semblance of interest since hearing Leona Lewis (the most manufactured record company puppet possibly EVER!) seems to be univerally praised and is up for 4 - yes 4! awards - after releasing one single and one album that was written for her, A&r'd for her, hyped up for her - etc, by messrs Cowell and Davies.

Purleeeeeese - this is just a record company cash cow (The Brits - not Leona) - not to be taken seriously IMO.

I'm only watching because David Tennant is presenting an award.