Fifteen years ago this week!
Let’s now complete our summary of the NME Awards, with all the winners in one single, easy-to-digest place. So, as an extension of part two of the NME Poll Winners 1952-1992, here’s the final part!
Continuing the list that saw Cliff Richard and The Stone Roses share the limelight previously, these are the more recent newcomers.
Most award ceremonies now seem to recognise live music, but the NME Awards have been doing it since way back in the early 1990s.
These are just a selection of the artist categories that relate to a particular genre of music.
There are a whole load of odd, eclectic, and occasionally wonderful one-off awards. Here are all the ones I could find.
In earlier decades, this award had been split pretty arbitrarily, and this continues. I’ve grouped these into British and International, since this is what they are currently going with, but we’re actually looking at about six different award categories here.
Next, here are the categories for best group – of which there are still many.
Finally, NME introduced the Godlike Genius Award in 1994, and have therefore followed with a suite of “best of all time” awards.
And that concludes the results of the NME Polls and Awards, from 1954 to 2018. Join us in 2019 for another new ceremony!
I’ve very probably mused about the nature of time here before, but the fifteenth anniversary of Richard X‘sPresents His X-Factor Vol. 1 is a pretty strange one to celebrate. He’s still producing artists, but has never bothered to follow this up, but as a collection of great retro soundclashes, it’s really pretty good. What blows my mind now is that some of the things he samples were as old then as the whole album is now.
It opens with the brief Start, in which a voice says “x” a few times, before Liberty X (remember them? They lost The X Factor, or something) turn up to introduce themselves over the introduction to Being Nobody, a soundclash between Ain’t Nobody and The Human League‘s Being Boiled. It’s brilliant in a way that pop seemed to stop being after Richard X‘s brief reign on the charts.
The Human League are probably the omnipresent force on this album, turning up briefly on Rock Jacket alongside a number of other influences and samples. This one’s a filler, though, carrying us along until another guest vocalist turns up.
This is really a who’s who of early 2000s British pop music in some ways, but I had no memory of who Javine was. Apparently she represented the UK at the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing, unsurprisingly, excruciatingly close to the bottom of the table. You Used To is a decent pop song, and who knows, maybe it could have been a huge hit too. Pop music is unpredictable sometimes.
Annie is next, pretty much right at the beginning of her career with the brilliant Just Friends, which is brilliant, and then for IX, a German computer repeatedly spells out Richard X‘s name, which makes a nice little interlude. Then the huge voice of Caron Wheeler, of Soul II Soul fame, turns up for the dull but worthy Lonely.
Deborah Evans-Strickland delivers vocals on the next two tracks, an eccentric posh version of Walk on By, and then Lemon/Lime. Pleasant, but there isn’t a lot of point in these unfortunately. Although some of the lyrics on the second track are pretty funny.
Finest Dreams brings Kelis, and was the third single from this album, peaking at number 8 in the UK. It marries another Human League track The Things That Dreams Are Made Of with The S.O.S. Band‘s 1986 hit The Finest (then fifteen years old), and works very well indeed. In fact, it performed better on the charts than either of the tracks it samples, which is impressive.
The unexpected vocalist on the next track is Tiga, who performs You (Better Let Me Love You X4) Tonight. It’s brilliant, but then most of Tiga‘s work seems to be of an extremely high calibre. It’s just a bit too repetitive though, and as with several of the tracks on here, it drags a little towards the end.
The next track, Mark One, is a moment that anyone who grew up in the 1990s will appreciate, as Mark Goodier turns up to do a very meta in-album advert for this album. It’s a brilliant transition to Sugababes‘ Freak Like Me, sampling Gary Numan and Tubeway Army‘s Are “Friends” Electric? for the backing track. I suspect this might be how the album started out, as Richard X‘s original bootleg version had been a near-hit a couple of years earlier.
Into U is lovely, bringing together a new vocal by Jarvis Cocker with a sample of Hope Sandoval, and some unusually underplayed backing. It makes a great final track, closing out a pretty good album. The actual closing track is the brief End, which is one of the nicer interludes, and then the album is over already.
So in summary, despite a strong cast of extras, Richard X‘s debut may not be the best album ever produced, but it’s pretty good, and it did bring us some of the best pop hits of 2002 and 2003. In short, it’s definitely worth a listen.
You can still find Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1 on wide release.
The 2000s was, of course, the decade when nothing could be achieved without a heavy dose of corporate sponsorship, so the NME Awards flitted from Carling to Shockwave and the awards all gained individual sponsors. Let’s take a look at the first half of that decade.
Hosted at the Mermaid Theatre in London on 1 February 2000, by Steve Lamacq and Mary Anne Hobbs.
Hosted at Planit Arches, London, on 6 February 2001, by Peter Kay.
Hosted at Planit Arches, London, on 25 February 2002, by Zane Lowe.
Hosted at Hammersmith Palais, London, 13 February 2003, by Bill Bailey.
For my penultimate show on Bay Radio, I managed to recruit my very good friend Tom to come along and co-host. Which made for a much more varied show all round.
Tracks taken from the playlist (Total 13 tracks). A indicates A-list (7 tracks); B indicates B-list (3 tracks) and C indicates C-list (2 tracks). S indicates the Single of the Week. R indicates tracks taken from my own collection (Total 5 tracks). L indicates the ones from the “library” (Total 4 tracks). X indicates tracks from Tom’s record collection (Total 5 tracks).
Producer: None.
Co-host: Tom.
Notes: Yeah, I really enjoyed it this week – it’s definitely much more fun with a co-host… (even if you do have to relent & play Simon & Garfunkel and Jimi Hendrix…)
Long before this blog ever existed, some time around late 2000 or early 2001, I started compiling a list of essential albums. There were just six entries, and this was the fifth.
Truly an epic album in every sense of the word. For his sixth studio album, Moby elected to base his tracks on folk and Christian songs from the first half of the twentieth century. Although it took a while to catch on, this formula became so successful that every track from the album has since been used either in films or advertising, and even tracks from Play: The B-Sides (a limited UK release which reached number 24 in October 2000) have been extensively publicised. A total of seven singles were released in the UK (and a further 2 were released in other countries), and altogether there are no less than 12 different videos for tracks from the album.
Interestingly Play is often overlooked now for the work of genius that it is. The sound may have become a bit of a formula for Moby which took a while to shake off, but it was great for a while. The Beginner’s guide to Moby is here, and a more recent review is here.
For the uninitiated, Sunrise Radio was a station which used to carry the Independent Radio News around the UK via satellite, and was kind enough to leave a three second gap at the start and end so that stations such as Bay Radio could pick it up. Trying to catch it was a fine art, and relied on your clock being completely accurate…
Tracks taken from the playlist (Total 13 tracks). A indicates A-list (7 tracks); B indicates B-list (3 tracks) and C indicates C-list(2 tracks). S indicates the Single of the Week. R indicates tracks taken from my own collection (Total 11 tracks). L is the ones out of the drawer (Total 5 tracks).
Producer: None.
Notes: A-woo, my first one attempting to get IRN without Sunrise Radio… and it was moderately successful as well – except for a severe panic to get the 12.00 news (a wire had come loose somewhere), and a microphone which wasn’t plugged in. Mmmm, c’est la vie…
Way back in the distant past, I used to do a student radio show for Bay Radio in Aberystwyth called Music for the Masses. Show 8 would have sounded a little bit like this…
Tracks taken from the playlist (Total 12 tracks). A indicates A-list (6 tracks); B indicates B-list (3 tracks) and C indicates C-list (2 tracks). S indicates the Single of the Week. R indicates tracks taken from my own collection (Total 12 tracks). L is the ones out of the drawer (Total 5 tracks).
Producer: None.
Notes: The second in the “me against the world” week, which was probably less good than its predecessor, completely uneventful, and once again I decided the Rag Week jingle was rubbish. Oh yeah, and while I had far too many tracks the previous day, for this show I had far too few. You never can be too careful…
On 9th February 2005, Chris Evans hosted what was billed as the 25th anniversary BRIT Awards show (history seems to prefer to pretend that the first show was in 1981, rather than 1977). The venue was Earls Court in London, and an average of 6.3 million people watched the coverage the following day on ITV.
This post is part of a series about the history of the BRIT Awards. You can read about the 2004 ceremony here, and the 2006 ceremony next time.
Presented by Clive Owen. Nominees:
Winner: Keane
Voted for by listeners of independent radio, and presented by Minnie Driver. Nominees:
Winner: Will Young
Presented by Naomi Harris. Nominees:
Winner: The Streets
Presented by Lisa Stansfield. Nominees:
Winner: Joss Stone
Presented by Sharon and Kelly Osbourne. Nominees:
Winner: Franz Ferdinand
Voted for by listeners of BBC Radio 1, and presented by Jo Whiley. Nominees:
Winner: Keane
Voted for by viewers of Kerrang TV, and presented by Brian May. Nominees:
Winner: Franz Ferdinand
Voted for by viewers of MTV Base, and presented by Jazzy B. Nominees:
Winner: Joss Stone
Voted for by The Live Music Forum, and presented by Shirley Manson from Garbage. Nominees:
Winner: Muse
Voted for by viewers of CD:UK and readers of The Sun, and presented by Jodie Kidd. Nominees:
Winner: McFly
Presented by Siouxsie Sioux. Nominees:
Winner: Scissor Sisters
Presented by Natalie Imbruglia. Nominees:
Winner: Eminem
Presented by Charlie Creed Miles. Nominees:
Winner: Gwen Stefani
Nominees:
Winner: Scissor Sisters
Presented by Simon Pegg. Nominees:
Winner: Scissor Sisters
Presented by Jools Holland.
Winner: Bob Geldof
Chosen by listeners of BBC Radio 2. Presented by Matt Lucas and David Walliams in character as Mark Owen and Howard Donald from Take That respectively. Nominees:
The top five entries made it from round 1 to the final list of nominees, leaving:
Winner: Robbie Williams
The end of January 2000 saw this blog’s predecessor, the radio show Music for the Masses, return for another run of shows on Bay Radio, Aberystwyth’s student radio station.
Tracks taken from the playlist (Total 13 tracks). A indicates A-list (7 tracks); B indicates B-list (3 tracks) and C indicates C-list (2 tracks). S indicates the Single of the Week. R indicates tracks taken from my own collection (Total 13 tracks). L is the ones out of the drawer (Total 5 tracks).
Producer: None.
Notes: Mmm, nice. Err… not a lot else to say really. Lots of noisy listeners too, which is scary. But there we go. Oh, and hilarious drying up to even more hilarious consequences at one point. Well, I thought it was funny…
Music for stowaways 