Without wishing to sound hopelessly unpatriotic, the Brits is an awards ceremony that exists in the shadow of the Grammys. It almost invariably takes place a week or so after the US Recording Academy doles out its gongs in a ceremony that’s bigger, more star-studded and with more impact than the Brits can ever hope for, not least because the public seem to have rather more investment in who wins. Declining interest in the Brits is something you suspect even its organisers are aware of: you can detect an urge to drum up more attention in this year’s decision to shift the ceremony from midweek to a Saturday for the first time.
And sometimes, the US awards just foreshadow what’s going to happen at the Brits: from the moment Harry Styles snatched the album of the year Grammy from under Beyoncé’s nose, you somehow knew he was going to sweep the board in London. And so it proved.
