21:30 – The Ting Tings and Estelle take to the stage together for one of the most bizarre collaborations I’ve ever witnessed. It kind of works as they boh get to perform their biggest hits but it’s not a patch on last year’s Rihanna/Klaxons mash-up.
21:33 – Alan Carr on stage to present the award for ‘British Single’. What the hell is he wearing? I’m not exactly the most fashionable guy but some of these outfits are terrible. I’ll stick to Primark I think. And the winner is… not Diana Vickers… Girls Aloud. Much deserved, and it means Scouting for Girls …read more

Elbow have won the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Music Prize, beating the likes of Radiohead, Adele, Estelle, and bookies favourite Burial. The Manchester band won the annual music industry award for their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid.
The prize was contested by 12 of the best of British acts from this year, all of whom were considered to have released the best albums from the past 12 months. The nominees were announced back in July, when I expressed my desire for Radiohead to win for In Rainbows. But it wasn’t to be.

Estelle has had an astounding couple of years, going from being a London rapper struggling to gain any sort of press or public attention, to being an A-list celebrity and R’n’B diva loved on both sides of the Atlantic.
The song that started her whole reinvention as the darling of America was obviously American Boy, which was helped by not only being a brilliantly catchy song but also having Kanye West playing a big part. But has Estelle got enough in her locker to carry on selling huge numbers of records?
Her new single is called Pretty Please (Love Me), and is …read more

Estelle was riding high in the US charts with her album Shine, and the best-selling single from it, American Boy, and her career seemed to be heading in just one direction: up. Then her record company, Warner Music, decided to remove her material from Apple iTunes, and it’s all gone horribly wrong.
The short-sightedness of record companies continues to astound me. They are wholly failing to embrace the Internet and the related technologies that are changing the face of music distribution. This unwillingness to evolve is now affecting one British artist directly and unequivocally.
American Boy has been a huge hit all …read more

The Mercury Music Prize, sponsored by Nationwide, is the annual award given to the best album by a British or Irish artist released in the previous 12 months. The ceremony isn’t until later in the year, but a short-list is first released, with the name of the 12 artists, and their albums, on it which the judges think are the best of British.

Having said that, the Mercury Music Prize has a history of choosing albums by up and coming artists, rather than necessarily widely known artists, and certainly not the best-selling ones. Which means there are always some huge surprises …read more

This week has seen Estelle vying for the number one spot in the UK single charts with the queen of pop, Madonna, and the so called new Amy Winehouse, Duffy.
Estelle is fully expected to pip the two to number one with her first American lead release, American Boy, which also features Kanye West.
I really like the single, as I said so in my review on Killed By The Video Star, but a comment she made while talking to The Daily Star has prompted me to question whether she’s becoming a first class diva after a small amount of success, …read more