Tame Impala
The NME awards close off this year's major music awards tonight and might just prove to the be the kick in the posterior the season needs, after both the BRTs and the Grammys being widely criticised for being too predictable.
While both of those awards are desperately looking for viewers on the night to justify their massive telecasts and the requisite headlines by honouring some of the biggest names out there and perhaps not the best.
Thankfully, NME have decided against this and instead have given their nods to some artists that wouldn't even register on the radars of the more major awards ceremonies. Neither Tame Impala's weirdly woozy album or Jake Bugg's fantastic debut effort have so far been recognised by other prize-givers and for one, we're grateful that NME have given their votes to more obscure names out there.
Not only that, but the variation in nominee makes the categories wonderfully varied. Where else are you going to have Grimes, Florence Welch and Paul Weller all competing for the same prize?
The NME Award also have a great tone going through them. All the awards are very much of the same body, all share a similar taste, all look to be focussed at the same spot and they even have a collective sense of humour.
This is shown best in their treatment of One Direction. The BRITs had them nominated for Best Group and also cooked up a new award just to give them something to go home with on the night. The NME awards have given them nods for Worst Band and given Harry Styles a nominee for the Villain Of The Year prize.
Honestly, neither Babel nor Our Version Of Events were exceptional pieces of work, yet both received the top honours at the Grammys and BRITs respectively. That both were also the highest selling albums on their respective nominee lists just makes their decisions all the more predictable.
That this writer was able to predict all but a couple of the gongs at both the shows combined speaks to how little surprise there was at the last two awards. We're not even going to predict how the NME's go, as they're so much more varied and unpredictable.
While we'll have to wait until tonight to see if our suspicions are proved right, we hope that the NME awards will prove to be the antidote to an all-to-predictable Grammys and BRITs.
Tagged in Grammy Awards NME Awards Emeli Sande