The Results Are In... NME Awards 2008

Some things in life are guaranteed without fail. Your football team will always let you down at a critical moment, you'll always be a disappointment in bed, and hoards of adolescent fuckwits will vote Pete Doherty their hero of the year. It's enough to make you lose faith if you are actually prepared to let yourselves be bound by the annual ego-trip that is the NME Awards.

London's O2 arena was the venue for this year's festivities, and it seems as if the NME's faithful consumers have gone out of their way to defy logic, and more importantly, piss me off. Several of the results, particularly the bigger awards, are on the verge of being incredulous albeit sadly predictable. And where better to start than the oft-unbelievable 'Hero of the Year' award. It seems tradition dictates that Pete Doherty wins it every year... clearly because a crack addict producing second rate music in a watered-down guise of previous glories is clearly something that the nation's 14-16 year old scenesters aspire to. And I blame that particular trait for One Night Only among others.

And then it's only right that the Arctic Monkeys are rolled out to pick up every gong going for being the Arctic Monkeys. A quiet 2007 has yielded Best Video, Best Album and presumably Best Song featuring the name Brian. Oh, and The Enemy picked up Best Band. For what, exactly? Wearing tracksuits in a non-threatening manner while trying to be Coventry's version of Oasis.

But there is a silver lining to the immense grey clouds... the Manics picked up Godlike Genius showing that the NME have, yet again, gone full circle in their love-hate relationship with the Cymraeg gods (and also if you believe that Morrissey would have taken it had he not had a tiff with them).

It's hard to criticise the NME cos they are fucking good at what they do. It's just the majority of their readers that get on my tits, uniting morons from GCSE to Undergraduate level. More concerned with image than the music, not knowing who Richey Edwards was when he was on the cover two weeks ago, and trying to impose their will on free-thinkers. I'll continue to occasionally pick up the NME if I can afford it. But just don't ask me to relate to some of their readers, because even a labotomy might not even help 'em. And yeah, I'm angry for getting so bothered about it. Maybe it's just that I still have a lot of faith in (new) music and am already resigned to knowing that people won't give a shit unless the NME tell them.