The Glitz, The Glam, and the Obtrusive Disconnect of the Brit Awards 2025
The Brit Awards 2025 got here and went, and if there was one prevailing sentiment from these outdoors the business’s golden circle, it was a powerful sigh. Not of awe, however of exasperation. The Brit Awards have been as soon as a real celebration of musical innovation, a chaotic however memorable spectacle the place expertise and unpredictability thrived. Now, it has all of the authenticity of a company PowerPoint presentation, full with pre-approved narratives (regardless of Jack Whitehall’s try at off-the-cuff banter-comedy) and an unshakable feeling that you just’re watching a sanitised spotlight reel of the foremost labels’ newest investments.
Your complete occasion, which aired after the equally as nauseating present, Britain’s Received Expertise, felt like a slap within the face to the 1000’s of artists struggling to outlive in an business that’s buckling beneath the load of the cost-of-living crisis. Whereas grassroots venues are shutting down at an alarming fee and unbiased musicians are combating algorithms for crumbs of publicity, the Brits paraded a actuality the place none of that appeared to matter. The evening wasn’t concerning the state of music—it was about promoting data. Positive, a number of artists had a go at utilizing their platform to attempt to advocate for constructive progressive change, however given the setting, it felt prefer it was extra of an try at advantage signalling than precise motion. The crowds performed alongside, clapping and cheering for the spectacle of benevolence, however until anybody within the business is ready to struggle tooth and nail to avoid wasting the UK’s tradition sector, phrases are simply as empty as the guarantees the brand new Labour authorities made to attempt to get into energy.
Who Wants Benefit When You Have Advertising and marketing?
It has lengthy been whispered that the Brit Awards are little greater than a automobile for main label artists, however in 2025, the equipment has by no means been extra uncovered. To interrupt by means of, you don’t simply want expertise—it’s essential be hand-picked, repackaged, and relentlessly marketed. There’s a glass ceiling for anybody who isn’t ushered into the limelight by media giants, and for each rising star who will get a shot, a whole lot of equally deserving acts stay in obscurity.
The Final Dinner Get together are the poster kids for this phenomenon. They tick each field required for a 2025 business darling: retro aesthetics, ethereal harmonies, and the air of an underground act—regardless of being something however. Their rise felt inevitable, not natural. The identical could be mentioned for Lola Younger, whose studio output is undeniably polished however whose dwell efficiency left many questioning how a lot of the heavy lifting is finished in post-production. When the stage calls for greater than manufacturing wizardry, the cracks start to point out. Their voices, whereas sturdy, lacked the magnetism of real dwell expertise. The rigorously curated mystique shattered beneath the load of expectation, and what remained was a stark reminder of simply how a lot trendy success is engineered moderately than earned.
What could evade most individuals watching the Brit Awards is how the awards present is funded. Along with its sponsors, similar to Mastercard, the large 4 oligarchs of the music business, all chip in, making certain one of the best expertise on their roster will get their display time.
An Trade in Disaster, However Don’t Point out That On TV
Whereas the awards have been busy celebrating preordained success tales, the broader business is teetering on collapse. Small venues are disappearing quicker than the organisers of the Brits wish to admit, touring is turning into financially unviable for unbiased artists, and streaming companies proceed to pay peanuts. The severity of this case did not make it into the pristine script of the evening’s proceedings. As a substitute, Jack Whitehall, wanting like he was coked to the gills, tried to make the occasion a pantomime. Whereas this may occasionally make the awards present palatable to the broader plenty, no discerning determine throughout the business might ever mistake the carnival of tradition capitalism for any greater than a gaudy exhibition of pomp, pretension and favouritism.
The uncomfortable reality is that the Brit Awards exist in a separate actuality to the precise music business. The ceremony nonetheless operates as if we’re dwelling in a pre-digital, pre-cost-of-living-crisis world the place album gross sales are hovering and music is a viable profession for anybody with sufficient expertise and drive. The true world, nevertheless, tells a special story. Musicians at the moment are anticipated to juggle a number of jobs simply to afford the privilege of constructing music. But, for one evening solely, we’re meant to droop disbelief and purchase into the fantasy that every little thing is ok.
The Way forward for the Brits: A Misplaced Trigger or Simply Misplaced?
At what level does the Brit Awards grow to be so disconnected from the business it claims to characterize that it collapses beneath its personal weight? Some would argue it already has. What we witnessed in 2025 was a broadcast-friendly phantasm—one the place the business’s issues don’t exist, the place solely a choose few are invited to the highest, and the place the evening’s actual winners are the labels, not the artists.
If the Brits need to stay related, they should cease pretending. They should acknowledge the grassroots disaster, champion unbiased artists with out token gestures, and cease force-feeding the viewers a actuality that solely advantages a tiny fraction of the business. Till then, it stays little greater than a slickly produced advert, broadcast to remind us who we’re meant to be streaming subsequent.
Article by Amelia Vandergast