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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes

All the wins and performances from the Brit awards 2018 – as they happened

Dua Lipa and Stormzy with their respective braces of awards backstage at the Brits.
Dua Lipa and Stormzy with their respective braces of awards backstage at the Brits. Photograph: Ian West/PA

The pizza’s congealed, we avoided having to swig a full bottle in the drinking game, and Ed Sheeran’s going home (almost) empty-handed (save for the one award he already knew he’d won). The Brits 2018 is over.

For anyone who hasn’t been following our intrepid liveblogging, here are the results in brief:

  • British male: Stormzy
  • British female: Dua Lipa
  • British group: Gorillaz
  • Breakthrough artist: Dua Lipa
  • Global Success award: Ed Sheeran
  • British single: Rag’n’Bone Man, Human
  • British album: Stormzy, Gang Signs & Prayer
  • British video: Harry Styles, Sign of the Times
  • International male: Kendrick Lamar
  • International female: Lorde
  • International group: Foo Fighters
  • Critics’ choice: Jorja Smith
  • British producer: Steve Mac

There will be more Brits coverage from the Guardian’s music team tonight and tomorrow: Alexis Petridis’s rundown of the night’s proceedings will be live soon, along with a digest of what we’ve learned and a roundup of all the live performance reviews.

For now, thanks very much for joining us, and effusive congratulations to everyone who commented on the female performers’ legs and asked where all the real music was.

Updated

And breathe. It’s all over. Here’s the breadth of Twitter’s responses to Stormzy’s performance and calling out of Theresa May over her handling of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Stormzy's performance reviewed

Pure energy … Stormzy is the final peformer at this year’s Brit awards.
Pure energy … Stormzy is the final peformer at this year’s Brit awards. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock

Last year, he debuted the really rather good Shape of You remix with Ed Sheeran. This year, it’s time for the man they call The Problem, Stiff Chocolate, Wicked Skengman, or – if you’re even a little bit white – just plain Stormzy, to take to the stage himself. He does so under pouring rain to deliver Blinded By Your Grace Pt 2, backed by a gospel choir – the second of the evening! Stormzy’s though, dressed in the balaclavas of his album cover, is just that little bit gnarlier than Justin Timberlake’s.

Then comes perhaps the most electric segment of the entire show, as he strips off his soaked top and delivers a freestyle that both revels in “black girl magic” and Daniel Kaluuya’s Bafta win, and savages the Daily Mail and Theresa May over Grenfell. He swings the anger into a ferocious Big For Your Boots, stalking around the stage with pent-up rage bursting out in kettle-whistles of steam, rounding off the Brits with a blast of pure energy.

Updated

Stormzy wins British album for Gang Signs & Prayer

I love: the sound of breaking glass on Stormzy’s table as he and his cohort celebrate Gang Signs & Prayer winning best British album, and the fact that his suit is long gone (he’s about to perform). Once more, he thanks God, and acknowledges how strange some people might find that in this day and age: “But if you know God, you know this is all him,” he says, continuing to thank album producer Fraser T Smith, his #Merky crew, his family – all here tonight – and admit to how much his debut album took out of him. “I’ve never worked on something like this in my life, never given my entire being, my entire emotion,” he says. “I didn’t have anything left after.”

This is thoroughly, thoroughly deserved for Stormzy, whose debut became the first grime album to debut at No 1 on the album charts (and on his own independent label, #Merky, to boot) last February. The Brits’ efforts to atone for the #BritsSoWhite debacle of 2016 (they diversified their voting academy to bring in 17% BAME panellists – still a long way off decent representation) are evident this evening, though you’d hope Gang Signs & Prayer would have triumphed any year, especially in a fairly weak category such as this: only J Hus’ Common Sense could even hope of touching it.

Still, this makes tonight an absolute shocker for Sheeran, whose album ÷, lest we forget, was so big that the Official Charts Company had to change the singles chart rules after its 17 tracks all hit the Top 20 at once last March.

Updated

Jack Whitehall is claiming it’s “carnage” at the O2. It’s unclear whether he means genuine anarchy, or, y’know, things getting a bit out of hand at the end-of-term ball. Anyway, if it’s the former, please can ITV endeavour to actually show a bit of the mess during next year’s show. Nile Rodgers calls it “a vibe”! He can’t read the teleprompter. It’s fine, nobody’s paying attention any more.

Updated

The Brits hasn’t come in for accusations of sexism in the same way as the Grammys, mostly because unlike its US counterpart it still divides categories along gender lines, meaning that the disparity in recipients isn’t as pronounced. Still, fans are noticing some inconsistencies when it comes to the platforms offered to male and female performers:

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Rita Ora's performance reviewed

Head-rushing … Rita Ora performing at the Brit awards.
Head-rushing … Rita Ora performing at the Brit awards. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

There was a worry that thanks to spreading herself across TV, film and music, Rita Ora would never excel at any of them, and instead be mere eye candy for time-poor gossip columnists – a snack of all trades, if you will. But happily, she guested on the only good Avicii single ever, and released Anywhere, which is like a tropical house version of a forgotten Sound of Music song – ie pair it with a jug of woo-woo and all is well in the world.

She performs it after a brief blast of Your Song, dressed in a white tracksuit, perched on a pink geometric stage whose designer has just maybe, just maybe seen Solange’s live tour. Songs with choruses that don’t feature the singer doing any actual singing are a bit dangerous live, but Ora is enough of a pro by now to command the audience with a well-placed hair flick. Finally in the megamix is For You, her Fifty Shades duet with Liam Payne, which on paper is an economy-class version of Zayn and Taylor’s preceding soundtrack effort, on record is something Emeli Sandé rejected for being too Emeli Sandé, but at the Brits is surprisingly heartfelt and head-rushing. Maybe it’s the Kronenbourg I’m drinking at my desk? Her new single Proud, a return to her earlier, defiantly B-list roots, is rather conspicuous by its absence.

Updated

Time's up for Sheeran

The last award left for him to win is British album. To refresh your memory, the contenders are...

Updated

Harry Styles wins British video for Sign of the Times

This is voted for by fans, of course, meaning essentially this category was battle of the ex-One Direction members, with Liam Payne, Zayn Malik (plus Taylor Swift) and Harry Styles all in the final five. Each video had good things going for it: Payne’s Strip That Down wasn’t nearly as gross and sleazy as the song’s lyrics (though it was boring), and Malik’s I Don’t Wanna Live Forever was a literal translation of the lyrics, which is always good in a pop video; but the promo for Styles’s debut solo single was effortless and elegant – plus it gave us this timeless image of his stunt double flying through the air, wearing a horrifying mask of Styles’s beautiful face. He’s not here to collect it and he hasn’t even sent a video message, because Styles is the cool one and 1D sat through more than their fair share of tedious Brit awards during their lifespan.

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Kendrick Lamar's performance reviewed

Another satire … Kendrick Lamar, top, performing at the Brits.
Another satire … Kendrick Lamar, top, performing at the Brits. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Tonight’s surprise guests arrives amid a European tour that is frankly incredible, where vituperative broadsides against police brutality are paired with films of him achieving karmic alignment inside a glowing vagina. There seems to be a false start with his performance – and maybe a second and third one – as he begins a rendition of Feel lying above a Lamborghini in a glass case. Ironic wolf whistles sound around the arena, but it coheres eventually.

“This is another satire by Kendrick Lamar” reads the screen, as he segues into a performance of his verse from Rich the Kid’s New Freezer, with cheerleaders filing on to do the track’s viral dance craze. (If you want to do it at home, adopt the neck motion of an aggressively inquisitive, sass-talking ostrich and brace for the whiplash.) Inside the box, Rich the Kid smashes up the Lambo with a baseball bat. Well, what is it a satire of? The relentless covetousness of rap? Perhaps. Whatever it is, Kendrick just raised brows everywhere – those in the crowd, those watching at home, and the Brits as a whole from middle to high.

Updated

It’s time for yet another ad break so let’s have a look at Twitter:

Este Haim is out here claiming her title as the true Brits 2018 victor.

Updated

Ed Sheeran wins the global success award

A not-terribly-well-looking Elton John introduces the global success award via video message. Then Ronnie Wood arrives to give out the gong itself, obliquely referencing his notorious barney with Brandon Block at the 2000 Brit awards.

Brits Awards 2018 - Show - LondonElton John presents Ed Sheeran with the award for Best International Act during the 2018 BRIT Awards show, held at the O2 Arena, London. EDITORIAL USE ONLY. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday February 21, 2018. See PA Story SHOWBIZ Brits. Photo credit should read: Victoria Jones/PA Wire.

For his part, Sheeran gives credit to the record labels he works with around the world, and the “girl” who coordinates that work. He did this at the Q awards last October, too, referring to his British publicist as a “girl”. Come on, dude.

I mean, call a spade a spade – a sympathy spade. It’s like giving bin bags an award for “most effective rubbish-disposal vessel”, or custard a nod for “yellowest sweet gravy”. I wonder what wacky comedy purposes he uses his Brits for in Sheeran Towers. My guesses: paint stirrer, foam roller, earwax-removal chisel.

Updated

Nice to see DRAM up there with Gorillaz. Here’s a reminder that he brought us the greatest album artwork of all time.

DRAM

Updated

Sam Smith's performance reviewed

A little swagger … Sam Smith.
A little swagger … Sam Smith performing at the Brits. Photograph: David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock

Singing through the feathers, he’s perhaps spitting at being rather overlooked here – though he is still, Rag’n’Bone Man-style, eligible for next year’s awards – Sam Smith delivers Too Good for Goodbyes. This is his masterpiece thus far – wryly catty at himself, his top line has the kind of circuitous, searching melody that returns with absolute logic to its starting point, perfectly clear-eyed in his own romantic self-destruction. His slight lisp is his secret timbral weapon, and he can’t help a little swagger as he strides out; on his own, marooned from his backing singers, he still manages to completely command this vast stage. He encourages the crowd to clap on beat, something I generally think destroys the song in question, but here he turns it into a far more powerful gospel moment than Timberlake did with a massive choir earlier on. Underrated – though unlikely to be remembered amid the melee of next year’s pop.

Updated

Gorillaz win British group

Gorillaz with their award for best British group.
Gorillaz with their award for best British group. Photograph: Ian West/PA

Cartoon band member Murdoc delivers a video speech, while Damon Albarn and the other human members appear on stage for the evening’s most sodden moment! “I’ve got one thing to say,” says Albarn, quite possibly slurring, “and it’s about this country.” What follows teeters on the brink of addressing Brexit and cultural colonialism, but never really goes anywhere. “This country is, believe it or not, quite a small little thing, right, but it’s full of – it’s a lovely place, and it’s part of a beautiful world – but what I wanna say is don’t let it become isolated, don’t let yourselves become cut off, considering our size we do incredible things in music. We’ve got a real spirit and a real soul, and don’t let politics get in the way of all of that shit, alright?”

A remarkable moment, not only because ITV’s judicious swear-bleepers manage to miss Albarn’s last word, but because Albarn – on the cusp of his 50th birthday – manages to recreate the shambles of a standard Brits winner’s speech from his 90s heyday. Sometimes it truly takes an elder statesman to show the young ones how it’s done, yeah?

Oh God, it’s not over. First, Little Simz has her moment on the mic. Then Savages’ Jehnny Beth, who doesn’t seem quite clear on why she’s up there. “Best British … band?” Albarn tries to grab the mic again but – thankfully – ITV’s censors have recovered their sense.

And! Here’s Jack Whitehall again. “I really don’t want this to be an Adele moment,” he says. “I’d have let them speak all night if it was my choice.” Then a hammy stage whisper: “I think he was talking about Brexit!”

SOME FACTS: since this award was minted in 1977 (disappearing until 1982), there have been 15 sets of best British group nominees that haven’t contained a single woman. No British group category has ever contained more than two acts featuring female members – until this year, when the xx, Wolf Alice and London Grammar were all up for the award. This is exciting, I thought. Progress, I thought. Obviously a cartoon band led by Damon Albarn wins it.

SOME SLIGHTLY LESS COMPELLING FACTS: This is Gorillaz’s first successful British group nomination after nods in 2002, 2006 and 2011.

Updated

Liam Gallagher performs Live Forever in tribute to Manchester Arena victims

A perfect, anti-sentimental tribute … Liam Gallagher performs on stage at The Brit awards.
A perfect, anti-sentimental tribute … Liam Gallagher performs on stage at The Brit awards. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Ariana Grande was due to anchor a tribute to the victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack, but pulled out on doctor’s orders, so Liam Gallagher took her place. The same Liam Gallagher that told this paper earlier this week, re the Brits, that “they can fuck off if they think I’m going to go there and clap some fucking idiot … Get down there with your little fucking suit on and put your arm around Stormzy and Rag’n’Bone Man, do all this bollocks? That ain’t me, mate.” Well, even Liam, whose ego has its own magnetic field, isn’t above swallowing those words for people from his home city.

The lyrics, of wanting to live and not wanting to die, are painfully poignant, especially set again a spartan acoustic backing. “Now is not the time to cry, now’s the time to find out why” – a fitting note of defiance, even political fervour, and of course the title lyric is wretchedly fitting: the people who lost their lives in Manchester will live forever in the minds of those who knew them. I can’t remember hearing such a raw, unadorned Liam Gallagher performance. He stalks off stage in classic loping style, having delivered a perfect, anti-sentimental tribute.

Updated

Gary Barlow introduces Manchester Arena bombing tribute

Ariana Grande was due to fly from the US to the UK for this, until doctors told her she couldn’t travel. Instead, Liam Gallagher is performing the Oasis classic Live Forever, introduced by Gary Barlow.

Updated

The battle for best video, voted by fans, is really heating up online. There’s a lot of emotive pleas from Directioners for their three horses in the race, like this:

Versus the steely-eyed, bean-counting military precision of Little Mix fans:

Lorde wins international female

Lorde, appears on video-link to accept the award for international female solo artist.
Lorde, appears on video-link to accept the award for international female solo artist. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Solid presenting from Ellie Goulding and Adwoa Aboah, looking profoundly awkward as they reference Time’s Up, and Goulding makes a veiled reference to Grammys president Neil Portnoy’s comments that female artists needed to “step up” that absolutely nobody will understand.

Anyway, Lorde! A video message! I love how swiftly she translated from morose teen to utterly loveable New Zealand mum.

Here are the things Lorde has been doing instead of coming to London for the Brit awards: reading interviews with Greta Gerwig and Florence Welch, rehearsing for tour, giving out useful acne care advice on Instagram, and trying to persuade Louis Theroux to go and see Incredibles 2 with her at the cinema. Can you blame her? The Grammys disrespected her, and her salty response – a well chosen Jenny Holzer quote pinned to her dress coupled with on-camera swigs from a contraband hip flask – made her feelings on the sham of awards ceremonies perfectly clear.

Still, the recognition is welcome, especially since Melodrama sank like a stone commercially (it’s not in the Top 100 UK albums; for context, Céline Dion’s greatest hits is at No 99) for reasons that I will not understand until my dying day. It’s a masterpiece – what’s wrong with people. I would have liked to hear Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech though fear I may have died under the weight of Ponderous Thinkpieces in its wake.

Updated

If you’re wondering about that reference to Jesy Little Mix’s Jamaican accent, familiarise yourself thus. It really is something.

Dua Lipa wins breakthrough artist

Dua’s second award of the night. Fair dos, especially given that “cor hasn’t she slogged away” is the de facto narrative around her at this point, but you can’t help but feel that her competitors – particularly Dave and J Hus – had to fight a bit harder to swim up pop’s toxic stream.

Who are these children! Barron Trump? The cast of Stranger Things 3? Oh no, it’s little Gary and Susan Lipa, here for big sis Dua to show them that, as she promised in the liner notes to her album, magic is real!

Foo Fighters' performance reviewed

Foo Fighters performing at the Brits.
Rawk gravitas … Foo Fighters performing at the Brits. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock

Foo Fighters are a weird band to be playing, because despite them having won four Brits (including one tonight), gone many times platinum and being able to headline any festival on the planet (even some really weird electronic one because everyone ultimately quite likes Dave Grohl), they haven’t written a really big tune since The Pretender, and that was more than a decade ago. What are they even going to play?

The answer is The Sky is a Neighbourhood, performed in a recreation of the song’s video where the band perch atop a house – it was written after Dave Grohl watched a Neil deGrasse Tyson documentary and wanted to write a song about “when you look up at the night sky, you realise that you’re not only part of the universe, but the universe is part of us”. Stop hogging that reefer, Grohl! It’s big, chugging soulful blues-rock, but is it likely to ever break the top half of a best-of? Probs not, but they still bring a measure of rawk gravitas.

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Whither Ed Sheeran?

This was meant to be his night after going home almost empty handed from the Grammys, but so far he’s been pipped to British single and British male solo artist. There’s still British video and album to play for, but it’d be un grand scandale if we went home without either of those. (We already know he’s won the Global Success award.)

Updated

ANOTHER CONSPIRACY THEORY

But a slightly nicer one this time. Is Ed Sheeran married? People are looking at the ring on his finger and loudly wondering things like this.

Updated

We shouldn’t really swear that much on here so I’m using this message by a fairly random Twitter user to express my thoughts.

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Kendrick Lamar wins international male

You’d never have predicted this one given that he was in the country on tour when the rest of the nominees aren’t, but leaving behind awards ceremony cynicism for a sec, obviously he’s the worthy winner: a key social voice, musical innovator and – as anyone who caught his brilliant UK tour last week knows – a very funny man. (Good job he’s not wearing his white dressing gown tour outfit, though, otherwise there’d be some awkward backstage moments with Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne.) Kudos, Kung Fu Kenny.

Rag’n’Bone Man wins British single for Human

THIS SONG CAME OUT IN 2016. Far be it for me to suggest that Rag’n’Bone Man is a record industry plant, but he’s definitely a record industry plant. Still, we have the pleasure of hearing the noted orator’s acceptance speech – completely inconsequential until he swears, ITV mutes the audio and that’s one swig.

Updated

Ed Sheeran's performance reviewed

Ed Sheeran on stage.

Britain’s biggest pop star continues to be a confounding figure, impossible to truly hate or love – he has more pros and cons than an oversubscribed prison. On the pro side: everyman charm, nifty with a loop pedal, Thinking Out Loud being actually a really nice choice for a first dance at a wedding, and Shape of You even though I actually never need to hear it again. On the con side: being a glamour vacuum, the creepiness of casting too-attractive women in his videos who definitely aren’t his childhood sweetheart, and a sense that he would make Balinese gamelan instrumentals if it meant he opened up a lucrative Balinese gamelan market and got the Balinese gamelan Christmas No 1. So which side does this performance of Supermarket Flowers fall?

Well, it’s a song about his dead nan, so not even this jaded hack can lay into him too much. It is a pretty rote ballad, but then again some of the best ballads are, and for every person that the “You were an angel in the shape of my mum” lyric nauseates, another will be reduced to helpless blubbing. And Sheeran’s detail (“John says he’d drive then put his hand on my cheek”) is the kind of thing that lifts up this from generic emotional manipulation. Not half as bold as his performance last year, but after selling as many albums as he has, he’s earned a little rest on his laurels.

Updated

VAGUE POLITICAL STATEMENT HONK

Dermot O’Leary: “I can’t help thinking there’s just something lacking from this year.”

Emma Willis: “Female co-host?”

That’s two swigs, per Brew Rules.

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Dua Lipa's performance reviewed

Supernova … Dua Lipa performs on stage at the BRIT awards.
Supernova … Dua Lipa performs on stage at the BRIT awards. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

A couple of years ago there was a sense that Dua Lipa was like the word “fetch” in Mean Girls, ie just not going to happen. After her third single Mwah barely scraped the Top 30 I was sure I could hear knives being sharpened in the Warner Bros kitchens – but then Scared to be Lonely arrived, followed by New Rules, giving jilted lovers an entire mope-to-sass axis to work through, and she went supernova. Her aesthetic – as if the creative directors of Missguided, Pretty Little Thing, BooHoo teamed up Avengers-style to make the most zeitgeist-pretty look possible – helped.

She’s performing – what else? – New Rules, dressed like a sexy Moschino-coveting toreador and backed by a small army of female relationship advisers. She stalks her way through a series of neon-hued, no-fucks-given tableaux on the way to breakup nirvana, and, given the song trades in her stronger, deeper register, her performance is utterly assured. If this doesn’t win single of the year then we’re getting some placards made up.

Updated

Yer da is loving Dua Lipa:

CONSPIRACIES ABOUND

I definitely heard someone say this but confess I was paying closer attention to my pizza than the screen at that moment.

Foo Fighters win international group

Foo Fighters accept the award.
Foo Fighters accept the award. Photograph: Hannah Mckay/Reuters

Just in case Jack Whitehall wasn’t posh enough, here’s Anna Friel and Damian Lewis to present the award for best international group, which always feels like a bit of an afterthought. The Foos win. “Ayyyyy! Ayyyyy!” Grohl roars.

For a band so dedicated to rock’n’roll, the Foo Fighters’ stock in trade is that notoriously rebellious quality: unstinting reliability. Dave Grohl and co have won this four times now (2008, 2012, 2015) and been nominated twice more (1996, 2003). Why they’ve won for their staid real music, I have no idea, but it’s hard to make a case for any of the contenders: LCD Soundsystem will forevermore be the band that cried wolf, the less said about last year’s interminable Arcade Fire album, the better, and what on earth happened with Haim’s disastrous second album campaign? The Killers should have split up half a decade ago, but at least they can laugh at themselves.

Updated

Este from Haim, fresh from delivering very ostentatious bass faces, quietly upstaged Cheryl and Liam’s sex chat:

Pretty much this:

First the Grammys, now this! Why do awards voters hate Sheeran so much? Ginger prejudice? Proximity to Taylor Swift?

Updated

God, this is awkward isn’t it? We’re having a good time, aren’t we? It’s like the visual equivalent of one of Guardian Weekend’s 4/10 Blind Dates.

HANG ON A MINUTE: who knew that Liam Payne and Cheryl Cole would actually provide the night’s most brazen moment. “Is there a safe word?” Jack Whitehall asks, trying to do a saucy riff on Payne’s appearance on the 50 Shades Freed soundtrack. “She knows that,” Payne replies, gesturing to Cole. “Don’t stop,” she replies back without missing a beat. Jack Whitehall regrets ever asking this. My skin is crawling, either in revulsion or admiration, or maybe the effects of the drinking game starting to set in. “Don’t go anywhere!”

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Stormzy wins British male

Stormzy on his way to collect.
Stormzy on his way to collect. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

A surprising snub for Sheeran, given that the Brits looked set to shower Britain’s most business-savvy busker in bonuses after the Grammys ignored him almost completely. Sure, he has his millions, his devoted fans, the approval of his peers, but Sheeran goes about his work with Wolf of Wall Street-worthy ruthlessness, so he’ll certainly be kicking a filing cabinet over this missed sales target. Just imagine how many little blue “Best British Male!” stickers Atlantic will have to peel off the bumper edition of the already overstuffed ÷ that they were inevitably going to announce tomorrow. Regardless: the only good choice prevailed: Stormzy’s first Brit award! He’s the rare male solo artist dressed for the occasion! Loyle Carner’s great, but not really at this level yet; Liam Gallagher would make a better host than recipient (please, Brits, hear my prayer), and Rag’n’Bone Man reminds me far too much of all the earnest “blues” “men” I witnessed performing in Cornish beach bars as a teenager. Plus, nobody loves winning awards as much as Stormzy, though he seems taken aback! Maybe later he’ll even update the Mobo-referencing lyrics to Shut Up in tribute.

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Rag'n'Bone Man and Jorja Smith's performance reviewed

Passing the torch … Critics’ Choice winners Rag’n’Bone Man with Jorja Smith at the 2018 Brit awards.
Passing the torch … Critics’ Choice winners Rag’n’Bone Man with Jorja Smith at the 2018 Brit awards. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Last year’s Critics’ Choice award winner, Rag’n’Bone Man, duets with this year’s, Jorja Smith, in an autocratic vision of music industry synergy. After three years of reliably predicting which tremulously emotional white man would be clutched to the bosoms of Asda album buyers (Tom Odell, Sam Smith, James Bay), there was a wobble in 2016 when the tremulously emotional white man Jack Garratt became as culturally relevant as a blacked-up morris dancer. The Brits don’t want that to happen again, so the phenomenally successful Rag’n’Bone Man is being used as a kind of Trojan bear to smuggle Jorja Smith into the consciousness of the ITV faithful.

Rag’n’Bone Man begins with a very stark version of Skin, backed just by piano – a format which of course delivered major chills via Adele when she famously performed Someone Like You here in 2011. Smith arrives, and adds some hickory smoke to the campfire song. There’s some admirably delicate falsetto from Mr N Bone Man as a brass section swells behind him, flames lick up the set and a full band kicks in. Smith acquits herself well but certainly doesn’t upstage her Critics’ Choice forbear, who gives a typically robust performance. Makes you wonder, paired with that Justin performance: is this going to be the moodiest, woodsiest Brits ever?

Updated

An insider tells the Guardian that receiving the critics’ choice award isn’t just a matter of the record company putting a new sticker on the deluxe re-release of your album, but a solemn ceremony in which the winner is anointed with the blood of the Eurythmics.

Dua Lipa wins British female

Dua Lipa collects the award for British female solo artist.
Dua Lipa collects the award for British female solo artist. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Yes New Rules is a massive banger and yes Lipa has had a massive year (she’s the first British female solo artist to be nominated for five awards) but come on, really this is an award for the music industry for actually giving a young female solo artist the time to develop her music and style without panicking and sticking her in a room with Zedd, Marshmello or any of the other tepidly reliable EDM cyborgs. (We’ll forget the short-lived career wibble that was that Martin Garrix collaboration.) Still, to be fair to Lipa, she’s pure zeitgeist in a way that none of the other nominees are (let’s not forget her other big award nod this week – she’s up for Music Week’s best music and brand partnership award for her Foot Locker campaign), even if Jessie Ware or Paloma Faith almost definitely had more fiery acceptance speeches up their glittery sleeves.

Dua Lipa.

Still though, good effort! After reeling off a long list of names, Lipa started the night with a fairly bold statement (though I think that’s one swig, per the drinking game):

I wanna thank every single female that has been on this stage before me that has given girls like me – not just in the music industry but girls in society – something to look up to, and has allowed us to dream this big. Here’s to more women on these stages, more women winning awards and more women taking over the world.

Also loving Paloma noticing the camera is on her and flinging her head back in delight.

Updated

Here’s what Justin’s choir looked like from down on the floor, from our roving/wine-quaffing reporter Nadia.

Justin Timberlake choir Brits

Summary

Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head was released three years before Millie Bobby Brown was born, FYI.

Updated

The public vote on the British video award, so let’s head over to YouTube to see if we can glean any clues as to the winner from the comments section:

Ed Sheeran: Shape of You

  • Views: 3,266,983,331
  • “I love it so much that this video is not about sexualizing a woman’s body but it’s seriously about boxing but it’s also very sweet ” – Irana van Oostrum
  • “Can i get a like bc i don’t have a Valentine ” – Bente Hermans
  • “What kind of RON WEASLEY is that? XDXDXDXD ” – Ricks

Little Mix: Touch

  • Views: 236,072,252
  • “I will never ever get tired of this song. It’s a bop🔥 ” – Shannon Braxton
  • “Jesys voice has a beautiful vibration in it 😩❤️” – Hi There
  • “When you’re dancing to this this and trying to do your makeup at the same time and get mascara on your face😒😕 ” – McKayla Wright

Harry Styles: Sign of the Times

  • Views: 300,982,288
  • “This is one of the coolest music videos I’ve ever seen. Pure art. When he runs on the water..... holy shit ” – Fucas101
  • “This entire video could be my fucking aesthetic!! ” – piece of crap
  • “Y’all laughing when Harry flies. Flying somewhere with a beautiful view would be a dream come true. ” – Bleach

Liam Payne: Strip That Down

  • Views: 243,960,661
  • “This is way too similar to “It wasn’t me” by Shaggy ” – Maria Chiara Scatassa
  • “Your cute I would strip that down when ever you want me to. I made a dance that matches this song ” – Holly Amos
  • “someones trying to be David Beckham me thinks!! How laughable … songs pretty bad too ” – Tracieew

Zayn and Taylor Swift: I Don’t Wanna Live Forever

  • Views: 452,451,798
  • “Want my children kidz to hit the gym for those pain joints just remember the execerise mom taught and my sons and daughters I need u ” – Navilin Samuel
  • “I think the music video is a little disappointing. ” – Eunice EH
  • “Zayn has such glamorous eye lashes 🤷🏻‍♀️ ” – Kaatie 01

So there you have it. Based on this 100% scientific survey my money is on Harry Styles.

Updated

Justin Timberlake's opening performance reviewed

Chris Stapleton, left, with Justin Timberlake at the 2018 Brit awards.
Chris Stapleton, left, with Justin Timberlake at the 2018 Brit awards. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock

The last time Timberlake played the Brits was in 2013, he came promoting a critically derided new album with a handful of kickass singles, so this should feel like Groundhog Day. He comes primed for big-stage performance after his Super Bowl show a couple of weeks back, a pop mashup that was almost avant-garde in its insane complexity (or maybe just a bit of a mess) – he didn’t actually seem to do much singing, choosing instead to make occasional personal trainer “hup!” noises and bounding around like a funky televangelist. So what do we have here?

He begins here with Midnight Summer Jam, which takes Bruno Mars’s “shameless disco pastiche” baton and runs it into his own comfort zone – this is classic Timberlake: light, unthreateningly sexy and nimble of foot. He pulls the tempo down, triggers some live vocal samples (hey, people like it when Sheeran uses his loop pedal, right?) before bringing on country star Chris Stapleton for their duet Say Something. This is the cornerstone of the plaid-wearing “woods” bits of his album Man of the Woods – and while the wheel remains very much round and turn-y, it’s sturdy and satisfyingly harmonised. As noted last year, during the 1975’s performance, soulful white performers will bring out a gospel choir at the Brits on a hair trigger and so it proves here, but it works. If this is going to be soulful, dignified, emotive Brits to match the Time’s Up protests, then it’s a good basis to build off.

Updated

Jack Whitehall has all the gravitas of a student union president telling the new intake of freshers that “we work hard and play hard at Warwick”. Enjoyed his ribbing of Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith, but enjoyed more the fact that his weak Little Mix diss went down like a lead balloon.

Updated

Just thought you’d like to know that Z-list celebrities are already turning up at the afterparty.

Irina Ostroukhova on the red carpet of the Brits aftershow party.
Here’s Irina Ostroukhova on the red carpet of the Brits aftershow party. Photograph: Ian Gavan/Getty Images for Tempus Magazine
And here’s Tom London.
And here’s Tom London. Photograph: Ian Gavan/Getty Images for Tempus Magazine

Updated

Chris Stapleton: a name that means nothing to British viewers. Timbo might as well have got someone who works at Carphone Warehouse up there for all the applause poor Chris got. Anyway, the viewers (music critics) are loving it!

Updated

Jack “did you know I’m posh” Whitehall doing a skit with Big Shaq was as inevitable as Annie Lennox getting a nod for British female in the 1990s. Is his big coat also a surreptitious Talking Heads tribute? Probably not. Also “uckers” being blanked out by ITV means one swig for anyone following the drinking game. Anyway, here’s Justin Timberlake onstage!

Updated

Earlier today, reliably acerbic commentator Peter Robinson was rummaging through the Popjustice archives and turned up a programme from a Brits ceremony of yore. First up is the then BPI chairman wishing that more young people were in work so that the industry’s “natural customer was flush with cash to buy our records”. Given today’s unemployment stats, I’m looking forward to the economic analysis from the show floor.

Updated

Jess Glynne on Time's Up: 'We’ve all experienced sexism'

Jess Glynne at the Brits.
Jess Glynne at the Brits. Photograph: Nadia Khomami

Nadia has bumped into Jess Glynne, above, about her decision to wear a white rose. She says:

I’m wearing a rose to show solidarity with the Time’s Up movement. Women in music should use their platform to help enact change because you’re a role model to so many people. We’ve all experienced sexism. In the past I’ve been shut down, not had my opinions listened to. So I would say to all young women: stand for something, and believe in yourself.

Updated

The night’s biggest winner is evidently the person behind Mastercard’s Twitter for these seamless brand integrations.

Our reporter Nadia Khomani is sat on actual table in the actual Brit awards while we look like the very picture of pasty journalists under our office strip lighting. Here’s what’s being advised booze-wise.

Advice for Brits boozehounds.
Advice for Brits boozehounds. Photograph: Nadia Khomami

Remember, don’t drink too much, or you might end up having a rather slipshod argument with Ronnie Wood in front of millions of people.

Updated

Rich the Kid has posted this backstage, with Ed Sheeran. Given the rapper guests on a currently hot track with another certain rapper whose name rhymes with Schmendrick Shlamar, the rumour mill is going into overdrive about potential surprise performances ...

B I G O V E R S E A S D R I P 🇬🇧 TAKING ED TO MEET THE PLUG 🔌🔌

A post shared by Rich The Kid (@richthekid) on

Updated

The performers have got their own emojis for this evening; in lieu of an official avatar, Anne Marie has gone for the next best thing, and come dressed as the dancing lady emoji.

Updated

Confirmation from BPI boss Geoff Taylor: Ariana Grande was meant to fly over to participate in a tribute to victims of the Manchester Arena bombing, but was ordered not to travel by her doctor. It’s speculated that Liam Gallagher will take her place …

Updated

More schlebs! First up the xx, who have finally been taught to smile for the camera with very neatly varying levels of success.

The xx.
The xx. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Jesy from Little Mix, after showing the make-up lady a Kylie Jenner Insta and saying “that”.

Jesy from Little Mix.
Jesy from Little Mix. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Sam Smith, who is a bit matchy-matchy with Justin Timberlake colour-wise, and who has really let his stubble go to seed.

Sam Smith.
Sam Smith. Photograph: John Phillips/Getty Images

Jess Glynne, fresh from appearing in a club scene in a 1993 film starring Janeane Garofalo and Matt Dillon as computer hackers.

Jess Glynne.
Jess Glynne. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

So far, everyone on the red carpet seems to have incorporated a white rose – either a flower or a pin – somewhere on their outfit, in keeping with the Brits’ suggestion to show solidarity with the Time’s Up movement. Here’s the pin:

And here’s Ed Sheeran wearing a big white flower.

British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran poses on the red carpet on arrival for the BRIT Awards 2018 in London on February 21, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / Tolga AKMEN / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE NO POSTERS NO MERCHANDISE NO USE IN PUBLICATIONS DEVOTED TO ARTISTSTOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images

Do look out for the moment later where he changes out of his nice suit to perform in his skivvies.

Updated

Some more red carpet arrivals. If you look closely enough you can see Paloma Faith and one of Clean Bandit reflected in Stormzy’s suit.

Stormzy.
Stormzy. Photograph: David M. Benett

Ed Sheeran, looking rather matte in comparison.

Ed Sheeran.
Ed Sheeran. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

“I’ll have your cocoa ready for you after the show ends, pet.”

Cheryl and Liam Payne.
Cheryl and Liam Payne. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters

Haim, going for an “Ophelia cosplay” tip.

Haim.
Haim. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Justin Timberlake, searching deep into our collective souls for someone who liked Man of the Woods.

Justin Timberlake.
Justin Timberlake. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

We’re going to get through these next few hours together via the solidarity of the liveblog and possibly the intake of alcohol. Should you wish to make things interesting, here are the rules to the Guardian’s Brit awards drinking game:

One swig:

  • Incredibly vague “political” statements or solemn acknowledgement of “the issues facing our industry”
  • Rag’n’Bone Man being lost for words
  • Agonising show floor “banter”
  • Artists attempting to leave the stage in the wrong direction
  • Shots of Liam Gallagher to make things more interesting
  • Jack Whitehall reminding everyone that he’s posh

Two swigs:

  • Mentions of Time’s Up, #MeToo, industry sexism or racism
  • Dancing house (or similar) falling off/through the stage
  • ITV’s wildly overcautious sound blackout whenever there’s the faintest hint of a swear
  • Sour mention of James Corden for nobbing off to America
  • Pop culture “parody”

The whole bottle:

  • Any artist climbing on a table, pointing into the assembled record executives and naming names

If you want to suggest more in the comments, I’ll update the game accordingly.

Updated

Celebs have already arrived, and if Dua Lipa, Rita Ora and Perrie Edwards are anything to go by, the look is very much “upstaging the bride”.

Rita Ora.
Rita Ora. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock
Dua Lipa.
Dua Lipa. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images
Perrie Edwards of Little Mix.
Perrie Edwards of Little Mix. Photograph: John Phillips/Getty Images

Updated

Welcome to the Brit awards 2018!

Fatted on pizza and a responsible amount of beer, we are here to bring you all the action from tonight’s Brit awards. Maybe action is too strong a word – after the political atmosphere at the recent Golden Globes, Grammys and Baftas ceremonies, the Brits, despite its white-rose pin initiative, looks less like a protest and more like Good Old Fashioned British Entertainment. Expect:

  • Bumbling “Ooh it’s a bit awkward that I’m posh isn’t it” “humour” c/o newly minted host Jack Whitehall.
  • A lap of honour for British entertainment’s greatest contributor to the GDP, Ed Sheeran.
  • Custom emoji for each performer, because never mind the entertainment industry’s ongoing “issues”, here’s Rita Ora with a droopy digital pout!

Updated

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