Amid a Brit Awards year filled with questions over representation, there was one notable victory that bucked the trend. Picking up the Rising Star gong (a marker of seemingly inevitable stardom previously won by the likes of Adele, Ellie Goulding and Sam Smith), Flo became the first-ever group to do so.
Jorja Douglas, Stella Quaresma and Renée Downer sit in a pocket often ignored by the awards circuit: a girl group in the classic sense of the word, put together by a management team and engineered for success. It famously took Little Mix a decade in the game to pick up a Best Group title at the 2021 ceremony, the first time a girl group had been recognised on a level with their guitar-based peers. Yet less than a year since the release of debut single ‘Cardboard Box’, Flo are already racking up the wins. On top of the Rising Star title, they were named the BBC’s Sound of 2023; they’ve picked up an MTV Europe Music Award and been nominated at the Mobos.
