The Brits: Harry Styles, Stormzy, Wet Leg, Lizzo and more get ready for weekend ceremony – amid controversy over all-male best artist shortlist
When Adele was named the winner of the Brits’ inaugural artist of the year award last year, she addressed the changes that had been made to create the gender-neutral prize.
“I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and being a female artist,” she told the audience at the O2 Arena. “I’m really proud of us.”
The first recipient of the Brit Awards‘ artist of the year prize – a merging of the best male and best female prizes to make space for non-binary acts, after questioning from Sam Smith and others – happened to be female, but also happened to be Adele, one of the world’s biggest music stars, riding high following the release of a much-anticipated comeback album after several years out of the spotlight.
She was pretty much a dead cert. With the future Mercury Prize winner Little Simz nominated alongside her, the line-up was a mix of male and female stars, and it seemed to be a step forward for progress.
Fast-forward 12 months and the landscape is different. When this year’s best artist shortlist was revealed to be an all-male line-up – Harry Styles, Stormzy, George Ezra, Fred Again and Central Cee – the criticism came instantly; Brits organisers were quick to respond and point out it is an industry problem.
“While it’s disappointing there are no nominations in the artist of the year category, we also have to recognise that 2022 saw fewer high-profile women artists in cycle with major releases as was the case in 2021,” a spokesperson said. “These trends based around the release schedule are a feature of the music industry, but if, over time, a pattern emerges, then this puts the onus on the industry to deal with this important issue.”
From Florence & The Machine to Charli XCX – who was eligible?
To be eligible for this year’s best artist award, an act must have achieved at least one top 40 album or two top 20 singles, released between 10 December 2021 and 9 December 2022.
Florence & The Machine, Charli XCX, Rina Sawayama, Mabel, Ella Henderson, Becky Hill, Beth Orton, Emeli Sande, KT Tunstall, Beabadoobee, Nina Nesbitt and Shygirl were all eligible; Kae Tempest, who is non-binary, was also eligible.
However, female artists make up just 12 of the 71 eligible acts, or just under 17% – indicating, as Brits organisers have pointed out, that the problem is bigger than their ceremony alone. The treatment of female artists in the industry is an issue that has been put under the spotlight most recently by Raye, who has finally released her debut album after years of being held back.
But as microcosms of the wider industries they represent, awards ceremonies do tend to lay these problems bare. Take Little Mix’s win for best group in 2021, for example, when they became the first female band to win the award – ever – more than 40 years since the Brits began.
Read more:
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Everything you need to know about the Brits this year
‘It’s been a real wild journey’: Raye on the fight for her debut album
Sky News contacted representatives for the female and non-binary acts eligible for best artist this year, but none of the stars were available for comment.
You can’t really argue with the now Grammy best album winner and Mercury-nominated Styles, nor chart-topper and Glastonbury headliner Stormzy. And of course, it’s subjective, but there has been plenty of debate surrounding the other slots.
Overall, female artists – or groups featuring women – make up 42% of the nominations. And of course, they could well dominate the winners’ list on the night – last year, female artists picked up 10 of the 15 (66.67%) of the prizes available; Adele winning three of these.
‘They’re trying to even the playing field’
The Nova Twins: Amy Love (left) and Georgia South. Pic: Federica Burelli
This year’s Brits ceremony takes place on Saturday, held on a weekend for the first time.
Alt-rock duo Nova Twins, who are nominated for two awards – best group and best rock/alternative act – say that as two young black women, they have had to overcome being pigeonholed as hip-hop or RnB musicians to make the music they really want to make, and that there is “100%” misogyny in the industry.
Speaking to Sky News about the gender-neutral award, guitarist and singer Amy Love praised Brits organisers for trying to “even the playing field” – but said: “At the same time, if you’re going to do that, then make sure you’re including everyone… otherwise it becomes just a male category again.”
She continued: “There’s been improvements [but] the conversation still needs to be had and we just hope that people can reflect, so then the following year it won’t happen again.
“And that’s all it is, it’s just a conversation. I think people get so used to jumping down each other’s throats and then nothing gets done because it turns into anger. But if you just talk, analyse, you know, recognise what’s going on, hopefully the following year it could be fixed.”
“You acknowledge the good done in other areas,” said South, highlighting their own nominations and those of fellow female duo Wet Leg – who tie with Styles for most nods this year.
More women being recognised for “heavy” music is “a win”, she added. “But then we can also keep pushing.”
There’s always controversy around an awards show…
Mo Gilligan is hosting the Brits for the second time this year. Pic: John Marshall/ JM Enternational
Comedian Mo Gilligan, who is hosting the ceremony for the second time this year, tells Sky News there is “always some kind of controversy” surrounding an awards show; he points to the Oscars, where black actresses have yet again missed out on the best actress shortlist. “They are holding the mantle for controversy.
However, he says it is important not to let any controversy overshadow things for the artists caught up in it through no fault of their own.
“But for me, it’s letting the powers that be that are upstairs in a boardroom to be the ones who can really sort out this kind of stuff, whereas for me, it’s just [about] making sure I give people their moment, really. And I never want to feel like I’m throwing my opinion on someone’s biggest moment in their career.”
However, he says the conversations “should be” happening. “I think that’s what music’s all about.”
What have others said?
All Saints won two gongs at the Brit Awards in 1998. (L-R) Nicole Appleton, Melanie Blatt, Shaznay Lewis and Natalie Appleton
All Saints star Shaznay Lewis, who won two Brit Awards for the band’s hit song Never Ever in 1998 – best single and best video – wrote about the issue for the Radio Times; in her article, she welcomed the category change as a “welcome and wonderful step” for recognising talent regardless of gender, but said that “progressive ideas should benefit everyone”.
She continued: “How can that be the case if we do not acknowledge female artists, who are symbols of empowerment to millions of young aspiring women?”
Next year, three-time Brit winner Smith will be eligible for a nomination for the first time since the changes in the category, following the release of their album Gloria.
Speaking about the lack of female nominees in an interview with The Sunday Times, the star said it was a “shame”, and continued: “Things are moving forward, but it’s obvious it’s not there yet. From seeing that [best artist] list, there is still a long way to go.”
They continued: “It’s incredibly frustrating… It feels like it should be easy to do. [The Brits] just have to celebrate everyone because this is not just about artists getting awards. Awards are for kids watching on TV, thinking, ‘I can make music like this’. When I was young, if I’d seen more queer people at these awards it would have lit my heart. Awards are there to inspire.”
What about the other categories?
Lizzo pictured at the Brits in 2020 – she is due to perform this year. Pic: Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP
Across the other major categories – song of the year, best new artist, best group, international group, international artist, international song, and best album – there is more of a mix.
Internationally, with Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Lizzo in the mix, women outnumber the men – Kendrick Lamar and Burna Boy – as they do in the best new British artist category, 60% to 40%.
The British song of the year category is male-dominated – with two thirds (66.67%) of the artists featured being male, a quarter female (25%), and one non-binary (8.33%). And with The 1975, Wet Leg, Styles, Stormzy and Fred Again up for best album, the split in this category is 80% male, 20% female.
For international song, the nominees are 50% male, 50% female.
Girl band FLO have already been announced as this year’s rising star recipients – the award is always announced ahead of the ceremony – and the other two acts shortlisted, Cat Burns and Nia Archives, are also female; a sign perhaps that more female stars could be up for the big awards in future years.
In the genre categories, there is more gender balance, but these have received criticism of their own. While the new best pop and RnB category is more inclusive in terms of gender, it isn’t in terms of genre; with Cat Burns, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and Sam Smith in the running, there is a distinct lack of RnB.
Brits voting explained
Wet Leg, who won two Grammys earlier in February, are up for four awards at the Brits
YolanDa Brown, chair of the BPI, which runs the awards, and Damian Christian, chair of the 2023 Brits committee, released a lengthy statement about this year’s awards and the voting process behind them.
The awards are reviewed annually, they said, and the decision to bring in the artist of the year award was made “following extensive industry consultation, and informed by the belief that it was time to progress to judging artists solely on the quality and popularity of their work, rather than on who they are, or how they choose to identify”.
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The Brits Voting Academy is made up of around 1,200 music industry experts. This year, some 52% of those who voted identified as women, while 31% were “members who are black, Asian or minority ethnic”, Brown and Christian said.
Sectors represented included artists, producers, record labels, publishers, managers, retailers, live promoters, and journalists and media workers.
Is any of this likely to come up on the night?
With artists such as Charli XCX, Sawayama and Hill, who missed out on the best artist shortlist, up for other awards, they may well have something to say should they win in their categories.
And whichever man wins best artist could also take a stand, too. In fact in 2020, when he won the award for best male artist, before the changes, Stormzy paid tribute to the women in his team – after only four nominations out of a possible 25 in mixed categories went to women that year.
“To be the best male, I have got the most incredible females in my team,” he said. “You lot are the greatest, the best male is nothing without the best females. I love you guys.”
So keep an eye on those speeches.
Entertainment
Erin Brockovich: ‘My chiropractor saw mud on my stiletto – I said, I’ve been collecting dead frogs’
Erin Brockovich says a chance conversation about a muddy stiletto with her chiropractor led to the making of the award-winning film about her life.
The climate activist, who was played by Julia Roberts in the movie, told Sky News: “My girlfriend, who was a chiropractor, was giving me a chiropractic adjustment and asked me why I had mud on my stilettos.
“I said, ‘Oh, I’ve been collecting dead frogs’. She goes, ‘What is wrong with you?’ So, I started telling her what I was doing.”
Then just a junior paralegal, Brockovich was in fact pulling together evidence that would see her emerge victorious from one of the largest cases of water contamination in US history in Hinkley, California.
Her hard work would see her win a record settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric Company – $333m (£254m) – but that was all still to come.
Little did Brockovich know, but her tale of a muddy stiletto would get back to actor Danny DeVito and his Jersey Films producing partner Michael Schamburg, and through them to the film’s director Steven Soderbergh.
Brockovich says Soderbergh was “wowed” by what he heard.
She says he realised her image “was something that Hollywood might be drawn to that I was never thinking of – the short skirt, the attitude, the big bust, the stilettos, the backcombed hair. Somehow, it came together.”
‘I was always going to be misunderstood’
Released in 2000, the powerful story of one woman’s fight for justice made Brockovich a household name, and the film won actress Julia Roberts an Oscar.
Now, 25 years on, Brockovich says she believes her legal victory was helped in part by an unlikely ally – her learning difficulty.
Julia Roberts and Russell Crowe win best actress and actor at
the 2001 Oscars. Pic: AP/Richard Drew
Brockovich says: “Had I not been dyslexic, I might have missed Hinkley.”
Recently named a global ambassador for charity Made By Dyslexia, she’s been aware of her learning differences since childhood and still struggles today.
She says “moments of low self-esteem” still “creep back in”, and she long ago accepted “I was always going to be misunderstood”.
But for Brockovich, recognising her dyslexic strengths while working in Hinkley proved a pivotal moment: “My observations are wickedly keen. I feel like a human radar some days… Things you might not see as a pattern, I recognise. There are things that intuitively, I absolutely know.
“It will take me some time in my visual patterns of what I’m seeing, how to organise that. And it was in Hinkley that that moment happened for me because it was so omnipresent [and] in my face. Everything that should have been normal was not.”
‘A huge perfect storm’
Brockovich paints a bleak picture of what she saw in the small town: “The trees were secreting poison, the cows were covered in tumours, the chickens had wry neck [a neurological condition that causes the head to tilt abnormally], the people were sick and unbeknown to them, I knew they were all having the exact same health patterns. To the green water, to the two-headed frog, all of that was just I was like on fire, like electricity going, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on out here?'”
She describes it as “a huge, perfect storm that came together for me in Hinkley”.
But a side effect of the movie – overnight global fame – wasn’t always easy to deal with.
Pic. Made By Dyslexia
Brockovich calls it “scary,” admitting, “when the film first came out the night of the premiere, I was literally shaking so bad, I was so overwhelmed, that Universal Studios said, ‘If we can’t get you to calm down, I think we need to take you home’. It was a lot”.
Brockovich says she kept grounded by staying focused on her work, her family and her three children.
With Hollywood not always renowned for its faithful adherence to fact, Brockovich says the film didn’t whitewash the facts.
“I think they really did a good job at pointing out our environmental issues. Hollywood can do that, they can tell a good story. And I’m glad it was not about fluff and glamour. I’m glad it was about a subject that oftentimes we don’t want to talk about. Water pollution, environmental damage. People being poisoned.”
‘Defend ourselves against environmental assaults’
While environmental awareness is now part of the daily conversation in a way it wasn’t a quarter of a century ago, the battle to protect the climate is far from over.
Just last month, Donald Trump laid out plans to slash over 30 climate and environmental regulations as part of an ongoing effort to boost US industries from coal to manufacturing and ramp up oil and minerals production.
In response, Brockovich says, “We’re not going to stop it, but we can defend against these environmental assaults.
“We can do better with infrastructure. We can do better on a lot of policy-making. I think there’s a moment here. We have to do that because the old coming into the new isn’t working.
“I’ve recognised the patterns for 30-plus years, we just keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, expecting a different result.
“For me, sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, just get your ego out of the way’. We have to accept that this might be something greater than us, but we can certainly defend ourselves and protect ourselves and prepare ourselves better so we can get through that storm.”
You can listen to Brockovich speaking about her dyslexia with Made By Dyslexia founder Kate Griggs on the first episode of the new season of the podcast Lessons In Dyslexic Thinking, wherever you get your podcasts.
The Menendez brothers’ bid for freedom through resentencing can continue with the hearing scheduled for Thursday, a judge has ruled.
Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, received life sentences without the possibility of parole after being convicted of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
Lyle was 21 at the time, Erik was 18.
Last year, Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon asked a judge to change the brothers’ sentence from life without the possibility of parole to 50 years to life. That would make them immediately eligible for parole because they committed the crime when they were younger than 26.
But Mr Gascon’s successor Nathan Hochman submitted a motion last month to withdraw the resentencing request, saying the brothers must fully acknowledge lies they told about the murder of their parents before he would support their release from prison.
Separately, Governor Gavin Newsom, who has the power to commute their sentences, has asked the parole board to consider whether the brothers would represent a public safety risk if released.
Anamaria Baralt, cousin of Erik and Lyle Menendez, hugs attorney Mark Geragos. Pic: AP
In light of Mr Hochman’s opposition, Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Michael Jesic ruled on Friday that the court can move forward with the hearing.
“Everything you argued today is absolutely fair game for the resentencing hearing next Thursday,” he said.
From prison, the brothers watched through a video link and could be seen in court seated next to each other in blue.
Speaking after the hearing, the brothers’ lawyer said: “Today is a good day. Justice won over politics.”
Prosecutors accused the brothers of killing their parents for a multimillion-dollar inheritance, although their defence team argued they acted out of self-defence after years of sexual abuse by their father.
The brothers were convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder. Pic: AP
The brothers have maintained their parents abused them since they were first charged with the murders.
A Netflix drama series and subsequent documentary about the brothers thrust them back into the spotlight last year, and led to renewed calls for their release – including from some members of their family.
Entertainment
Ex-Abercrombie & Fitch chief executive Mike Jeffries ‘unfit to stand trial due to dementia’, prosecutors and defence team say
Abercrombie & Fitch’s former chief executive is not fit to stand trial on sex trafficking charges as he is suffering from dementia, both prosecutors and his lawyers have said.
Mike Jeffries has Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia and the “residual effects of a traumatic brain injury”, his defence attorneys wrote in a letter filed at a federal court in Central Islip, New York.
The 80-year-old needs around-the-clock care, they added, citing evaluations by medical professionals.
Prosecutors and defence lawyers are calling for Jeffries to be placed in the custody of the federal bureau of prisons for up to four months. They say he should be admitted to hospital to have treatment that could allow his criminal case to proceed.
The business tycoon, who led fashion retailer A&F from 1992 to 2014, pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges in October, and was released on a $10m (£7.65m) bond.
A total of 15 men allege they were induced by “force, fraud and coercion” to engage in drug-fuelled sex parties.
Prosecutors have accused Jeffries, his partner Matthew Smith, and the couple’s alleged “recruiter” James Jacobson, of luring men to parties in New York City, the Hamptons and other locations, by dangling the prospect of modelling for A&F advertisements.
Smith and Jacobson have also pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
‘Progressive and incurable’
In their latest letter on Jeffries’ health, his defence lawyers said at least four medical professionals had concluded his cognitive issues are “progressive and incurable”, and that he will not “regain his competency and cannot be restored to competency in the future”.
These issues “significantly impair” his ability to understand the charges against him, they wrote.
Jeffries’ partner Matthew Smith, pictured outside the court in December, has also pleaded not guilty. Pic: AP
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“The progressive nature of his neurocognitive disorder ensures continued decline over time, further diminishing his already limited functional capacity,” said Dr Alexander Bardey, a forensic psychiatrist, and Dr Cheryl Paradis, a forensic psychologist, following evaluations made in December.
“It is, therefore, our professional opinion, within a reasonable degree of psychological and psychiatric certainty, that Mr Jeffries is not competent to proceed in the current case and cannot be restored to competency in the future.”
Jeffries left A&F in 2014 after leading the company for more than two decades, taking the retailer from a hunting and outdoor goods store founded in 1892 to a fixture of early 2000s fashion.
His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests by the Associated Press news agency for comment. The US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York declined to comment.
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