By Dave Rumour in Snap, Crackle and Pop
The nominees for the 2010 BRITs have been announced and the UK press today overfloweth with talk of the female pop rockets who look set to dominate proceedings. "Brits A Girl Thing" screams The Sun, after Lily Allen, Florence and The Machine, Pixie Lott and Lady GaGa were shortlisted for three prizes apiece. However, the big story here has to be the complete absence of a certain Susan Boyle.
How can this be? Without question, the big story of 2009 in music was the emergence of the Scottish warbler, who walked onstage an unknown at "Britain's Got Talent" one day and wandered off minutes later the biggest talking point in international entertainment. Her debut album, "I Dreamed A Dream", was amongst the year's biggest and has only just been shifted from the American chart summit after a six-week run.
What exactly is the problem with the BRITs judging panel? Elsewhere in the nominations, it's difficult to fault too many decisions, with Robbie Williams an absolute cert to bring next month's bash to a spectacular climax. However, the drab beyond compare list of acts competing for the 30th anniversary album prize - Phil Collins, Sade, Dire Straits, Dido, Travis, no Radiohead, Blur, Stone Roses and the wrong Oasis album - is further evidence of how out of touch these people are.
Even Ged Doherty, BRIT Awards Chairman and head of Boyle's record label, Sony, who have seen eight million copies of her debut sold around the world in just two months, called the snub "a crime". "I can't explain it. Every year there is something the academy gets wrong and this year they got that wrong", he admitted. Some suggest the panel's anti-Boyle stance is a backlash against Simon Cowell and that nods for Cheryl Cole and Leona Lewis are little more than tokenism. Or is it that, quite simply, Susan Boyle just isn't cool enough?
