Brit awards 2019: the live show and winners – as it happened

Last modified: 10: 36 PM GMT+0

Calvin Harris and the 1975 won big, but Beyoncé perhaps stole their thunder – look back at all the performances, speeches and red carpet outfits from the Brits 2019

That's everything for tonight!

Helmed with quickfire wit by Jack Whitehall, it was a Brit awards without any duff performances, and – in Calvin Harris and Pink’s medleys, plus Little Mix’s propulsive Woman Like Me – some genuinely great ones. And it’s the first time a Guardian writer has got a mention in an acceptance speech. Thank you for following along – here are your Brits winners for 2019.

British male: George Ezra

British female: Jorja Smith

British single: Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa – One Kiss

British breakthrough: Tom Walker

British group: The 1975

British video: Little Mix – Woman Like Me (feat Nicki Minaj)

International group: The Carters

International male: Drake

International female: Ariana Grande

British album: The 1975 – A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

British producer: Calvin Harris

Critics’ choice: Sam Fender

Global success award: Ed Sheeran

Outstanding contribution to music: Pink

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Pink's performance reviewed

She may be heading towards her Radio 2 years, but Pink’s image – bourbon-slurping tattoo artist ready to give Karen at the other end of the bar a piece of her mind – still makes her stand out in the pop landscape. In fact, she’s an object lesson in how to be a major label, Brits-friendly artist: doggedly weather the early days, when the label has no idea how to package you up, shrug off the inevitable flop records, keep singing songs that empower people out of the sweatpants phase of a breakup, and never forget the importance of Germany as a secondary market.

Starting in her dressing gown in her dressing room – very much part of her #relatable image – she kicks off with Walk Me Home and is swiftly hoisted into a costume that looks like Big Bird in the climactic scene of Carrie. Up she goes into the heavens, with the flamethrowers from Kanye’s 2015 performance earning back some of their value for Just Like Fire – a highlight of late-period Pink, thanks to its vocal leaps as vertiginous as her drop to the arena floor. Then it’s into Just Give Me Reason, in some ways her most melodically satisfying song; Nate Ruess’s part is done (very capably) by Dan from Bastille in the most quintessentially Brit awards moment of this year’s Brit awards. The medley klaxon has been well and truly sounded.

Another recent Brits cliche – projection mapping – is deployed for an upbeat take on Try before a change into a newsprint-covered mac for What About Us. It remains an utterly shameless ripoff of Coldplay’s Sky Full of Stars, but remains just as cheesily satisfying. She and her dancers finish by holding lights in a gesture of solidarity for … what? Well, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes pop just needs to be uplifting.

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We tracked down Matt Goss!

The Bros brothers were among the best-received presenters from the crowd at the Brit awards. And it’s no surprise: their documentary for the BBC, After the Screaming Stops, was a huge Christmas hit.

Matt Goss told me: “The fact it went viral is extraordinary. I think we broke a lot of the BBC records as well. The overwhelming response is that it’s being emotive and connective experience. People have been coming up to me in the street talking about their family, their work, and their loss. The documentary transcended music.”

When asked what it was like to be thrown back into the spotlight, Goss said it was a misconception that he was ever really out of it. “Fame doesn’t suddenly go away. In the last five days, I did two shows …” When I was faced between the choice of getting a more professional photo for the liveblog or a selfie, I obviously went for the selfie.

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Outstanding achievement

Pink’s nomination (announced before the awards) felt a bit, “Huh, okay” – but her legacy, while quiet, is more considerable than you’d think. When she arrived in 2000, she pulled the curtain back on pop’s machinations (“LA told me you’ll be a pop star / All you have to change is everything you are”), brought grit to a squeaky-clean scene by confronting serious issues through her music and setting out a template of partying on her own terms that would influence much of mid-00s pop. Her Janis Joplin-worthy rasp and tornado-strong vocal power added gravitas to her towering hits, and her own identity as a straight-talking, zero-BS woman learning to deal with life as it comes has never wavered. I’d put money on Pink being the reason that a lot of the young women in this room wanted to be pop stars in the first place. (Adele has said as much in the past.) “I’ve been listening to her music my whole life,” Dua Lipa told Jack Whitehall earlier.

It’s 16 years since she was last here, she says. “I bet it’s hard for some of you to believe as well, but to be considered in the same category as David Bowie and the Beatles and Sir Elton and Sir Paul and Eurythmics and Fleetwood Mac – it’s beyond anything my brain can comprehend … It’s been an awesome journey from busking on the street to playing Dingwalls, to playing Wembley this summer … It’s been an awesome 20 years. Here’s to 20 more!”

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The 1975's performance reviewed

The 1975 now, fronted by Matty Healy, a pigeon-toed manifestation of the anxieties facing rock stars today. There’s the existential stuff we’re all going through – twisted politics, the death of the planet – plus some rather more particular anxieties, like how it’s simultaneously quite problematic and quite exciting to have women throw themselves into your DMs. And there’s some old chestnuts too, like how nice heroin is.

Performing Sincerity is Scary dressed in a woolly hat and headphones over his tuxedo in front of some huge New York brownstones, a la the video, the band smoothly play out the laidback, Chance the Rapper-indebted track. I was kind of hoping for a ferocious state-of-the-nation performance of Love It If We Made It, but I can’t be mad at someone who shouts out our brilliant deputy music editor Laura in an acceptance speech – and with a statement of real political importance.

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FYI

Khalid was two years old when Pink released her debut album.

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Best British album

Another shocker for George Ezra, who – by his colossal commercial success, at least – looked set to sweep the night. But the right act won: there’s probably more ambition and diversity in the 1975’s third album than there is across the rest of the night’s nominees combined. Heroin love songs! Weird Siri lullabies! A trop-house banger that somehow managed to revive pop’s most tired micro-genre and make it irresistible again. Obviously I am biased now but give them all the prizes.

This time around Matty Healy thanks their manager, his girlfriend (“Thank you for letting me write all that stuff down”) and the Arctic Monkeys “for still being such an inspiring and relevant band in 2019 – I know how hard that is”.

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Jared Leto

Err didn’t anyone tell Jared that the Greatest Showman bit was at the start of the show?

Anyone else when they heard Calvin Harris speak..... #BRITS2019 pic.twitter.com/KmIqHXZCIP

— Chris Green (@_Chris__Green_) February 20, 2019

Indeed – an admirable lack of mid-Atlantic blurring of his Dumfries tones. And while we’re here for reaction gifs we can get behind:

Brits, sweetie, you’re cancelled. Tom Walker over ELLA MAI, JORJA and MABEL oh no no no #BRITS2019 pic.twitter.com/74yFDaVi2Z

— Yasmin (@byasmin_x) February 20, 2019

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Beef beef beef!

Or at least Jack Whitehall’s best attempt at starting some. He plonks himself in the middle of Little Mix’s table to try and get them talking about Piers Morgan, who – precious snowflake – managed to agitate himself into a great frothing frenzy over nothing a couple of months back. “He didn’t like that picture where you stripped off naked … voluptuous chest and four chins, it must have been like looking in the mirror for him.” Little Mix aren’t ready to go there publicly. “JACK!” Jesy yells. “Jesy, what would you say to that dutty wasteman?” Nothing on live TV, it turns out.

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Best British single

Another worthy winner! Brits, are you sure you’re feeling okay? One Kiss is *chef’s kiss*, switching snappily between Dua’s inviting, warm-shore verses and the hall-of-mirrors heatwave vibe of the chorus. It is, however, wild that this is Calvin Harris’s first ever win for British single when he’s helmed so many smashes over the past decade. Justice for Feels, his Katy Perry/Pharrell duet.

Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa: One Kiss – video

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Jess Glynne and HER's performance reviewed

I might defer to actual woman Laura Snapes to ascertain how far this performance has pushed global feminism forward, but I would hazard not very much. In a Dove campaign come to life, Jess Glynne, US R&B star HER and 70 women (including Jess’s mum) all take their makeup off as she performs her song Thursday. According to Jess in a press release we got beforehand, this is “a gesture to remind ourselves and everyone else that it’s okay and we are enough as we are. I hope this moment can help enforce that no woman is alone”.

It is enormously well-meaning, and gestures of sisterhood like this – on a very public stage – are laudable, even culture-jamming. It certainly beats the staging for your average piano ballad; Jess is in perfect voice, and HER adds a gorgeously improvisatory take on verse two.

But just as Dove’s campaigns, beyond their championing of diverse body types, still quietly trade off female insecurity and a valorisation of beauty above all else, this act ends up feeling trite when set amid a night that announces beauty actually IS about glamour and makeup. Point is, if this makes you feel better about yourself as a woman, you’re sitting on a bar that society loves to keep really, really low.

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Jess Glynne and her mates are all taking their makeup off

ARE THEY RE-ENACTING YOKO ONO’S CUT PIECE? No? Oh. It’s a performance of Glynne’s single Thursday, ie: “I won’t wear makeup on Thursdays.” Babe, it’s Wednesday. I give it two minutes before I get a press release from the microfibre makeup removing cloth they’re all using. (Tbf I have one and it’s very good and environmentally friendly!)

So #touching.

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Best British producer

Calvin Harris recently had his 26th Top 10 single, which puts him joint 11th in singles chart history – an accolade he shares with Rod Stewart. That is quite a lot of whopping hits, which begs the question of why it’s taken so long for the Brits to actually give him any awards. Let’s get the conspiracy theories going: he once looked at Brits boss Geoff Ellis for too long at the urinals? He is viscerally anti-Britannia and can’t bear the thought of touching the statue? The voting body think he’s cheating because his Scottish heritage is largely overshadowed on his songs by the presence of gigantic US stars? Taylor Swift has orchestrated some sort of elaborate blackmail? Whatever dark forces were at work here have abated, and Harris has his first Brit.

And here he is: “I’ve been coming here for a few years and I’ve never got the opportunity to say anything on this stage before…” thank you etc.

No woman has ever won this award, and only two have ever been nominated for it – Kate Bush and Goldfrapp – which makes for an interesting contrast with Annie Mac’s preamble about how nice it is “to be at a Brits where as many females are nominated as males”.

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A better shot of that Meghan portrait. Is that some Queen Victoria styling? What does it mean, aside from the fact that she is a queen? How will the Daily Mail report this? How many Guardian commenters will lose it over us mentioning Beyoncé again? Questions…

Beyoncé and JAY-Z just accepted their #BRITS2019 award in front of a painting of Meghan Markle

Incredible.pic.twitter.com/WtaUk8aYh8

— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) February 20, 2019

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Best British video

THE OBVIOUS AND WORTHY WINNERS! There’s proper girl-band-ery afoot in this superbly weird video – dancing atop buses, acting fecklessly in a quasi-academic environment, writhing around on chairs – and I am here for it. I still have questions about Jesy’s lip liner though. Like, why is there so much of it?

A lot of enjoyable high-pitched wailing in their acceptance speech, delivered by Jade Thirlwell: “We never win this! Oh my god, thank you so much! We have had absolutely no shame in asking people every day to vote for this.”

Little Mix: Woman Like Me – video

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Calvin Harris’s performance reviewed

Medley! The Brits were born for medleys. We kick off with Giant, which to be honest is one of Calvin’s weaker moments: Rag’n’Bone saying “I am” over and over again like a malfunctioning mindfulness app does not a chorus make, and the brass is like an abortive Rudimental studio session heard through a partition wall. But this is a pretty robust rendition, with Harris twisting knobs amid banks of (presumably redunant) analogue synths and generic electronic gear.

It segues into Promises, with Sam Smith dressed like a mirrorball being sent through a black hole. Whoever keeps breaking up with him and sending him into boozy nights out full of self-loathing and loneliness, please keep doing it – it’s resulting in some great pop songs (see also Dancing With a Stranger). But it doesn’t seem to faze him: singing ever so slightly flat, he’s joined by Winnie Harlow for some Saturday Night Fever-style dance moves and generally fabulous sashaying. Finally Dua Lipa, ever a fan of a high short, stalks her way around some shrubberies as if lost in the Ibizan hillsides for her performance of One Kiss: the soundtrack to flirty eye contact over a 5pm mojito in Alicante.

Altogether it’s a very strong showcase for the Scottish producer’s pop touch. Can we take a minute to hail him? Slide, Blame, We Found Love, Ready For the Weekend, his Spectrum remix, This Is What We Came For and potential Brits winner One Kiss are all in the absolute top tier of pop this country has ever produced. And, Shawn Mendes aside, his underwear advertising remains #goals.

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Calvin Harris

If anyone is particularly enjoying the work of breakdancer Jai Hickling, you can see him performing again at Nuneaton’s first ever breakdancing festival, at the Griff and Coton Sports club on 9 March.

Ed Sheeran wins the global success award

And gives the most boilerplate, phoned-in acceptance speech of all time. “Means a lot … can’t be there …” Snooze.

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Beyoncé and Jay-Z in front of *that* Meghan Markle portrait

The British media: h-

Beyoncé and Jay Z: pic.twitter.com/ftPCwh2pcU

— shane telford. (@MrShaneReaction) February 20, 2019

The Duchess of Sussex in the portrait behind Jay z and Beyoncé #BRITs pic.twitter.com/MVJfQt6fBK

— Lucy ♣️ (@LucyPaigeC10) February 20, 2019

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The international categories

None of them have shown up, but they have sent actual thank-you messages! That’s unexpected. From Ariana Grande (international female) and Drake (international male) but not least from Beyoncé and Jay-Z, winners of best international group as the Carters, who thank the UK for always being supportive.

“Everything is love, thank you,” says Beyoncé, standing next to Jay-Z in front of a portrait of Meghan Markle – in what one could interpret as a show of support for the duchess, who has been the subject of vitriolic treatment at the hands of the tabloids.

Well played @Beyonce & @S_C_ 😂

Watch The #BRITs 2019 live here: https://t.co/qj4KiENtGs pic.twitter.com/rGnmq0RUlr

— BRIT Awards (@BRITs) February 20, 2019

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Jorja Smith's performance reviewed

Jorja Smith goes from backing up Rag’n’Bone Man at last year’s awards to getting a slot of her own, and you could make a reasonable case for the Brits helping to nurture her path towards the big time. But then they would, wouldn’t they, given she is distributed by The Orchard, who are owned by Sony, who have been managing the last three years of the Brits. But because of her commanding choruses and charisma, she deserves the industry whirring away beneath her – even if her taste for vocal fry is on a par with a particularly disgruntled Los Angeleno tween.

Don’t Watch Me Cry is the Britsiest choice she could have made for the Brits: piano breakup ballads have of course, per Adele, made for some of the most memorable moments in recent Brits history. Aside from a rogue whoop, the audience is pin-drop quiet for Smith’s commanding performance, though truth be told, she is better at lower-key, bruised performing than this classic vocal showboating – it would be so much radical to get her to do something like Blue Lights, a claustrophobic crime story, on stage here. But as a bit of palate-cleansing after the bombast of the first few performances, it works perfectly.

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Little Mix’s electrifying performance has Emma Bunton, and many others, up on their feet and applauding. Respect from girlband to girlband.

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Little Mix's performance reviewed

Little Mix, whose spat with Piers Morgan has clearly sent them into weaponised frenzy of sass, sit like a coven around a table before discarding their pink PVC coats for a marauding take on Woman Like Me. They’re joined by Ms Banks – who we championed back at the start of 2018 and is standing in for Nicki Minaj; the US rapper co-signed Banks’ magnificent guest verse on Stylo G’s Yu Zimme, in which she announces her intention to absolutely rinse the assets of her boyfriend, ie a very Little Mix kind of energy.

Banks crushes her self-penned verse, bragging of her “hips from my mama and attitude from my daddy”, and Little Mix also deliver: all throaty hollers, saucy gyrations and tongue flicks, plus a bombastic martial energy in a glitching, exploding arrangement. Their knackered cardio breathing is audible at the end of the mic: they gave everything, and are rightfully Britain’s best girl band in a generation. Shame they didn’t win best group in a way – but judging by the fan energy on socials, the public-voted video award will be theirs.

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Best British breakthrough

A confession: I knew absolutely nothing about Tom Walker until this week my job dictated that I had to know something about Tom Walker. Here’s what I guessed in advance: bad hat. Outsized beard. Big voice. Tender-hearted yet beefy ballads, maybe tarted up with a little au courant synth work. A bit Jack Garratt. A bit Rag’n’Bone Man, a bit Lloyds TSB advert soundtrack, a bit “urban”. Secular bombast, that kind of froggy voice you get when you haven’t quite swallowed your tea properly. READERS, GUESS WHAT. Sadly this is less testament to my brilliant telepathy than it is the utterly predictable shape of Britain’s male pop stars.

Anyway, here he is (“Yes gran, here we are!”). Obviously this is a much worse acceptance speech than the last one because it doesn’t mention me.

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The Guardian's own Laura Snapes gets an acceptance speech shoutout!

In case you missed that, the piece that Matty Healy is referring to, by our very own Laura Snapes, is this brilliantly angry yet clear-headed piece of campaigning journalism. Read it in the next ad break.

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Best British group

The nominations for this category are often a bit suspect – pop groups versus Real Manly Bands. But in the 1975, you have a group that straddles the best of pop and rock – and ambient, trop house, jazz, We Didn’t Start the Fire reduxes and all the rest of it, just going by their most recent record. To sound incredibly like a person who just turned 30, I love that the 1975 feel like an old-fashioned band – the kind where fans want to read everything they recommend, get tattoos of their lyrics and logos, and create community around. They’re strong advocates for women, and when Matty Healy made questionable comments recently about the state of misogyny in hip-hop, he didn’t double down, but apologised, properly, and promised to educate himself. Not to award medals for basic decency, but his response to the fans who held him to account feels like a positive model for the fan-artist relationship that so many acts take advantage of.

Anyway, here they are, looking nicely cleaned up (no more of Matty’s dodgy mohawk) and all having a lovely smooch with their girlfriends.

And then … Oh my god.

Matty Healy: “I just want you to listen to me for one sec, just a couple of sentences that a friend of ours, Laura Snapes, said this, and I thought we should all really really think about it. She said that in music, ‘male misogynist acts are examined for nuance and examined as traits of difficult artists while women and those who call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art.’”

I had no idea that was going to happen. Matty is quoting from the comment piece I wrote about the allegations made against Ryan Adams last week.

here's @Truman_Black quoting @laurasnapes on the #BRITS2019 pic.twitter.com/eriebQjjxc

— Quinn Moreland (@quinnmoreland) February 20, 2019

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George Ezra's performance reviewed

Exuding ruddy-cheeked asexual vigour like a Richard Curtis hero, or one of those butcher’s mannequins come to cheerful life, it feels like George Ezra is the only thing holding Brexit-era Britain together by sheer force of his wholesomeness. If the pop thing goes south, you can imagine he’d shrug gamely and go off to become a PE teacher and have four kids.

He performs Shotgun, up for British single later on this evening, backed by lustrous vistas of Monument Valley. Some extremely supple bass guitar and robust brass back his summer road-trip anthem; if Hugh Jackman’s tactic was, like the Aesop fable, to blow your coat off your back, then Ezra warms up the room to the point where everyone’s ready to not just take off their coats, but skinny dip in the pool. Shotgun is a blast of pure positive energy that only the churlish, the contrarian and the people who you absolutely never want to be stuck in the kitchen at a house party hate.

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*Brexit joke klaxon*

Jack Whitehall: “Westlife announced that they were back in the studio. Suddenly a hard border with Ireland doesn’t sound so bad.” One swig, and a joyful one. Whitehall is really taking names, and I welcome it.

Best British female

I’m quite surprised this didn’t go to Jess Glynne, whose last album was the most successful new British album of last year after George Ezra’s Staying at Tamara’s, but I’m glad it didn’t, because … well, she’s terrible. Florence and Lily getting it somehow never seemed likely as the Brits push towards recognising a newer generation of artists. Anne-Marie is a compelling person but lacks the artistry to make her into a proper pop star, simply representing the most evolved point of the “former guest vocalist turned pop star” nexus. And so Jorja Smith feels like a good choice: her debut Lost & Found subverted her neo-soul template with its prickly atmosphere and jaded, post-Winehouse relationship lamentations remade for millennials.

“This is for all the little girls and women who are being themselves and loving everything they’re doing,” Smith says, sweetly.

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AND DRINK

HER: “Haven’t you heard, Nile, the future is female.”

Best British male

Humour me for one second and imagine that Aphex Twin had won this. Imagine the malevolent avatar he would have sent to collect the award in his place while he spends the evening at home in Cornwall ignoring the whole thing. The appalled looks on the faces of major label executives as the squirming synths of T69 Collapse writhed around the O2. No?

Obviously, rather than reward Richard D James – prone to impishness, fibs, and full-on disturbing vocals – the Brits have chosen his polar opposite in George Ezra: rosy of cheek, sweet of nature and deep of voice. His cheery guitar pop (which even I, black of soul, cannot find it within me to hate) dwells firmly in a genre that I like to call Massive In Cornwall, something I’d like to be able to say about local man Aphex Twin, though sadly my petitions for Windowlicker to be adopted as the county’s national anthem have fallen on deaf ears.

Anyway, “the man we all love to love…” seems genuinely bowled over (“Oh my!”) to win his first Brit award – potentially his first of three tonight.

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Hugh Jackman's performance reviewed

Hugh Jackman opens the show, ahead of a UK tour that starts in May in which he will perform songs from The Greatest Showman, Les Misérables and hopefully a musical theatre version of Hungry Like the Wolf dressed as Wolverine. Cynics will say that this is a shameless ploy to flog tickets to casual ITV viewers, and they would be absolutely right, but The Greatest Showman was the biggest selling album in the UK in 2018, and so it is absolutely right and proper he is here.

He appears atop a pyramid of dinner-jacketed dancers, performing The Greatest Show, whose “whoa-oh-ohs” are actually exactly the kind of thing you’d hear in the chorus of a Brit awards-anointed, major label pop prospect. But turned up to an absurd fever pitch: every dial has been twisted to 11 for the Brits 2019 opening.

You can do a fairly quick psychological assessment of our culture off the back of it: we all just want to have maximalist musical entertainment, of the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody, Mamma Mia! and A Star is Born, to deafen the awfulness of everything else in the world. “Australia’s answer to Bradley Walsh”, as Jack Whitehall bills him, proves the perfectly deafening tonic.

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It's a roast

“If you like your coffee decaf and your Nando’s lemon and herb, strap in for the Prius of pop…” Jack Whitehall on George Ezra! Who – in classic nicest-guy-in-rock style – seems to have taken it well.

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This is... the Greatest Showman?

Ben and I remain blissfully ignorant of what actually happens in The Greatest Showman. My guess: Huge Jackman is the ringmaster of a circus. He is a reserved man, uninterested in human contact, but the animals trust him. He falls in love with a human lady, who is mute, having been raised by wolves. She can only sing, and he only sings to her. A jealous gorilla (Bob) steals her away. Huge and Bob have to fight for her affections. They both die. It turns out that the lady can speak, and that this was all a ruse to let her enact her plan to return the animals to freedom. As she raises the gates on the lions’ cage, she roars: “This is the greatest show, man!” Fin.

Ben’s guess: From snatched snippets in online advertising and children singing in supermarkets, I can surmise that The Greatest Showman features Hugh Jackman playing a man possessed by the ghost of Gene Kelly, forced to hunt down a bearded woman to retrieve his true form, in the Moulin Rouge. Zac Efron co-stars.

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Bryt festival!

An incredibly baller move to open your awards ceremony with a spoof of the biggest cultural disaster in recent memory, but kudos Brits! Swimming pigs and blowjob jokes! Amazing.

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Christine and the Queens: 'Women rule this year – but there are still lots of things to do'

Christine and the Queens, nominated for international female, said she’s encouraged by the gender and racial diversity of the nominees this year. She told me: “It feels amazing. It feels like women rule this year and the spectrum is really broad. I’m nominated with Cardi B and Ariana Grande and we are all really different women in this industry, but we are trying to be fierce.”

She added that the industry was only scraping the surface when it came to women’s equality. “We are only just starting to understand the struggle. From sound engineers to the artists, positions should be occupied by women. There are still lots of things to do.”

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Drink!

And with the arrival of Poppy Jamie – an “entrepreneur focused on creating tools to help people feel happier” – that marks Shot No 1 (for me, at least) in the drinking game, under “visual presence of influencer who you couldn’t identify in a life-or-death situation”.

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Vick Hope, the Capital FM DJ who is the official host for the Brits on YouTube, said she’s relieved to see Ella Mai nominated for breakthrough artist. “She deserves that and if she wasn’t in that category, I’d be quite upset. She has made one of the most important R&B songs of the last few years. It took her a journey to get that recognition because she’s been doing this, she’s been around, but she’s had to go to America to make that impact. And I don’t want that to be the case, because she’s a brilliant British artist. I want her to have her name here so we can show that she’s flying our flag. I’m so glad she’s being recognised for that.”

Hope said she’s thrilled to be covering the Brits. “When I was younger, Brits night was a big night and I cared deeply who was going to win the awards, who was going to perform. I used to listen on the radio and used to have all the nominations written down in my look book and write who won each one. I really, really cared. Music for me was a release, an escapism and it was really exciting. I’ve felt very proud of British artists from a young age. It’s a no real brainer to want to be involved in it.”

Fresh off the back of winning two Grammys, American R&B singer HER said she was excited to be at her very first Brit awards, where she’ll be duetting with Jess Glynne later on. “I’m really looking forward to seeing the 1975,” she told me.

When asked if the nominations this year were diverse enough, she said yes, but added that she didn’t know all the nominations. “This is my first time at the Brits. But I am excited to see all the women!”

At a nearby table, Giggs was notably absent. When asked where he was, the person sitting beside him shrugged and offered up his main course. Well, rude not to…

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Transport for London are up to their usual viral-chasing meme-lordery. Whoever works at North Greenwich underground station surely gets very little work done.

#BRITS2019 @BRITs With an unaware @ShawnMendes pic.twitter.com/6t8QomJ7A9

— maddz🌸🌸 (@meemutual) February 20, 2019

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The gong itself

Sir David Adjaye’s statue sits at the latter end of the bottle opener to sex toy scale, with a distinctly 50 Shades vibe to its shadowy grey glass.

The awards statue for next year’s BRIT Awards has been designed by Sir David Adjaye @dadjaye @AdjayeAssoc #BRITs pic.twitter.com/oNz5WMYb8f

— Gary Marlowe (@gmarlowe) December 5, 2018

I just want to remind all the @BRITAwards winners tonight to use your trophy with a generous amount of water based lubricant. #BRITS2019 pic.twitter.com/47nqYYBqkS

— Alex (@alexrjsmith) February 20, 2019

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And the Brit award for working it goes to

A heavily pregnant Abbey Clancy showing the Meghan Markle-obsessed tabloids what “flaunting” your baby “bump” truly looks like, with admirable commitment.

Chicken is on the menu at the Brits tonight, but the caterers seem somewhat stressed that none of the guests are that interested in sitting down and actually eating. Guests have an hour to get through three courses. But as for this Guardian reporter, I’m not saying no to free food...

More Bros, auditioning for a paint chart somewhere between “Terracotta Sunrise” and “Arizona Mustang”.

This might turn into a Bros appreciation liveblog for a while.

More arrivals, beginning with Olly Alexander: Cruella de no chill.

Lily Allen, presumably paying off her album advance with a witchcraft store on Etsy.

Well done to Jorja Smith, for channelling vorticist painting and flapper dresses into what is presumably a comment on the overreaching industry economy of the 1920s.

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What happens when the screaming doesn't stop

Bros appear to have announced a follow-up to their instant cult-hit documentary, What Happens When the Screaming Stops, which will focus on the making of their new album. Seems like a bit of a Faustian pact but when did this country ever learn to let a good joke lie, eh?

#Bros #BRITS2019 @mattgoss @LukeGoss looking forward to seeing you on stage next year receiving an award 🤞🙏😘❤ pic.twitter.com/NWxW6Vg6l2

— ❤Vicky❤ (@VickyVixen) February 20, 2019

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I’ve just met Emma Bunton, who said she’s happy and relieved to be a bystander at this year’s Brits awards. When asked whether it was weird to be watching the Brits after the Spice Girls’ iconic 1997 performance – remember the Union Jack dress? – she laughed. “It’s really lovely, and no there’s no pressure. I love it. I get to have a glass of champagne and get to relax.” She said she’s really looking forward to the show’s opening, which will be performed by Hugh Jackman, and excited to see Little Mix and Pink. Oh and her post-Brits tip? “Always get a McDonald’s on the way home”. Filth.

Throwback to a few of our @Brits memories 🇬🇧 Good luck to all the nominees tonight! ❤️ #BRITs pic.twitter.com/hQvBlbpNZY

— Spice Girls (@spicegirls) February 20, 2019

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Some more red carpet arrivals, beginning with designer Daniel Lismore, for who lis is most definitely not more. Rules of the game are: if you get the ball in his mouth, it’s 50 points, the inner ring is 20, and the outer is just five. 50p please.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hugh Jackman, who didn’t get the memo that this is the Brits where you can dress like a Fifth Element extra and no one bats an eyelid. He’ll be opening the ceremony, presumably with a whole bunch of Greatest Showman pizzazz.

The brilliant Brockhampton, a nightmare for the paps trying to fit them all in one frame. They’re who we want to win international group, but the likelihood is sadly low. Lots going on here, it’s a bit like a hipster Where’s Wally.

And Florence Welch, who, as ever, looks like Miss Havisham moping about a Peckham co-working space.

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Aamna Modhin here, the Guardian’s emissary at the event itself, where women are taking the lead in Brit nominations this year: for the second time in the awards’ history, more women than men are up for the night’s biggest prize – album of the year.

Lilah Parsons, television and radio presenter on Heart FM, told me: “It’s so exciting that women are dominating the shortlist this year. I’m huge fan of Anne-Marie, and she’s got four nominations, and of course Dua Lipa who has had the most incredible ride. I still remember playing her on the radio when she was super new. She’s brilliant and a fantastic performer.”

Parsons said she’s particularly excited to see what Jess Glynne manages to pull off this year. “I couldn’t stop listening to her album. I think she writes great music with really impressive lyrics. I feel she’s very honest and vulnerable and talks about things you can relate to, but she does it in a way that makes you feel strong. She talks about her insecurities and anxieties, which a lot of us do go through. But I find by listening to her, the way she sings about it, it’s not in a kind of woe is me way, it gives you strength. I do think her music is empowering.”

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Red carpet arrivals

Celebs have been arriving on the red carpet, ahead of the show which starts at 8pm on ITV1.

Dua Lipa: when you’ve got a fetish party at 3 but a leaver’s ball at 6.

Rudimental, looking like they’re one blood-ink manifesto away from announcing their sex cult.

Maya Jama: for all your shower foam needs.

Shawn Mendes, who is the kind of handsome that makes mums start saying weird inappropriate things and then trying to brush them off like they’re normal.

Paloma Faith looks a bit like one of those cakes where there’s a Barbie doll in the middle and the cake is baked around them, you know the ones? Or perhaps a 70s loo roll holder. Either way.

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One swig is all it takes

If you have any ideas for drinking game rules, I’m all ears. Last year was potentially so eventful that establishing a game felt like a risk. This year feels a bit more like we’ll need to drink to get through it. Some rules to get us going:

• Calvin Harris wins his first Brit – one swig (is all it takes)
• Full house for any multiple-nominated artist – that’s Dua Lipa, Anne-Marie, Jess Glynne, George Ezra, Jorja Smith, the 1975, Calvin Harris, Clean Bandit, Dan Caplen (I’m sorry, who?), Demi Lovato, Florence + the Machine, Little Mix, Macklemore, Rita Ora, Rudimental and Tom Walker = as many shots as they win awards
• Visual presence of influencer who you couldn’t identify in a life or death situation – one shot (ideally of Flat Tummy Tea paired with mixer of choice)
• Any moment more mortifying than Cheryl and Liam Payne’s table interview last year (“Do you have a safe word?” “Don’t stop”) – three shots (or as many as needed to black out)
• Weak statement about feminist empowerment – strong slug of rosé/prosecco/gin out of quirkily branded vessel
• Jack Whitehall enjoying flirtatious banter with Love Island contestant – slurp of sun-warmed unbranded beer
• Bros performatively fighting when they present an award – one shot
• Bros’s Matt Goss unleashing torturous metaphor when they present an award – the letters S.H.O.T.S are so important because they personify the word shots
• One shot for every winner who fails to turn up to collect an international prize
• Any member of the 1975 doing “antics” or going a bit off-piste – half a bottle, swigged as recklessly fast as possible
• Idles either looking deathly bored or being goaded into naughtiness – one flaming sambuca

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Welcome to the Brit awards liveblog!

A very warm welcome to our 2019 Brits liveblog. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen this year, isn’t it? In 2018 we had all the Time’s Up white rose pins and the prospect of artists making vaguely political and/or feminist statements at the podium. Ellie Goulding did one, but later admitted she was told to do (who by, we don’t know), which sort of puts the whole empowering women/continuing to tell women what to do thing in perspective.

There have been no massive issues going into the Brits this year – no #BritsSoWhite, no outcry over diversity. The male/female nominations are split precisely 50-50, though BAME artists received only 19 nominations compared with 42 by white acts. Perhaps there’s not been much fuss because … the Brits commands ever decreasing levels of cultural relevance? Or – per Drake’s declaration at the recent Grammy awards – today’s pop acts care less and less about the validation of such industry bodies? Hard to say!

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Contributors

Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Laura Snapes and Aamna Mohdin

The GuardianTramp

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