NME Awards 2014: the winners (and losers)

Presented by NME columnist Huw Stephens, the NME Awards 2014 at Brixton Academy showed once again the comatose status of the current music business. Celebrations are useful if, and only if, there is a provision of knowledge for the audience, and are functional and practical if they honour and push brand new artists. A vanity fair that gives the nth award to Sir Paul McCartney is a complete show off. The fact that McCartney is a genius is a given, does he really need another award?

Nevertheless, the business is business and the music machine needs to be filled up with money, celebrities and advertising. So Arctic Monkeys won five awards, including Best Band, Best Live Band and Best Album, the great Damon Albarn won in the category Innovation, Lily Allen in the Best Solo Artist category (beating artists like David Bowie and Kanye West), Blondie for the cloudy category Godlike Genius, and as said before, McCartney in the likewise confused category Songwriter’s Songwriter (how can the winner of this category be different every year? Clearly a paradox).

Aside from these gripes, the show itself was massively funny and rich with surprises and great moments: the superb Jarvis Cocker rewarding the Arctic Monkeys, the live performance by The Horrors (with a brand new single from the up-and-coming new record Luminous). Damon Albarn’s speech was intense and genuine: “NME brings up so many memories…. I really care what NME thinks”, but most of all, the live exhibition of Metronomy, with the original Sugarbabes at the chorus. The two most cruel awards – Villain of the Year and Worst Band of the Year – went respectively to One Direction’s Harry Styles (who surprisingly managed to beat Vladimir Putin) and to The 1975 (who curiously played at the Brixton Academy a few months ago).

The NME Awards is a good show, funny, cool and rich in music, but it would be more interesting with some fearless choices in terms of line-up and in categories. Among all the winners, only two bands are actually brand new, Drenge and Fat White Family – all of the other winners are already famous. More sophistication in the search of the members of each category in future would be perhaps more appreciated.

Here is the complete list of winners:

Godlike genius: Blondie

Songwriters’ songwriter: Paul McCartney

Award for innovation: Damon Albarn

Teenage Cancer Trust outstanding contribution to music award: Belle & Sebastian

Best British band, supported by Windows phone: Arctic Monkeys

Best international band, supported by Austin, Texas: Haim

Best solo artist: Lily Allen

Best new band, supported by Mossimo: Drenge

Best live band, supported by Gig Buddy: Arctic Monkeys

Best album, supported by PS4 Infamous Second Son: Arctic Monkeys, AM

Best track, supported by Blackstar Amps: Disclosure, White Noise

Best music video, supported by Domino’s: Eagulls, Nerve Endings

Best festival: Glastonbury

Best TV show: Breaking Bad

Best music film: Made of Stone

Philip Hall Radar Award, supported by Monster headphones: Fat White Family

Best reissue: The Clash, Sound System

Best band blog or Twitter account: Alana Haim, Haim

Best book: Morrissey, Autobiography

Best small festival: Sŵn

Best fan community: Arctic Monkeys

Music moment of the year: Noel and Damon come together for Teenage Cancer Trust

Worst band: The 1975

Hero of the year: Alex Turner

Villain of the year: Harry Styles

Lorenzo Cibrario

For further information about the NME Awards visit here.