Brit Awards 2012 the Brits get realThe Brit Awards has long had an air of self-congratulatory pomp, but at least this time it had something to congratulate itself about.

Adele’s triumph represents the triumph of the Brits itself. A product of the Brits school has gone on to dominate the Brit Awards, thus essentially completing a perfect circle, from feeder group to frontline fame. Forget the Grammys and 20 million album sales, this was Adele's moment of truth: "Nothing makes me prouder," she wailed, "than coming to the Brits and winning album of the year."

Adele’s perfect year was really kicked off at last year’s Brits, when she performed Someone Like You backed only by a piano, and brought the house down. This year she brought a band but still played it absolutely straight, roaring through a barnstorming Rolling In The Deep. "You could have had it all," she sang in a voice rich with emotion, with barely a hint of the imperious scorn you could forgive from pop's new queen, a woman who really does have it all, and the bursting awards cabinet to prove it.

For a graduate of a performing arts school, Adele’s most surprising asset is soulful sincerity, an earthy sense that she is a real musical force who needs no tricks or special effects to deliver straight from the heart. Interestingly, the night’s other big winner has the same quality of down-to-earth musical integrity. Ed Sheeran came up without the benefit of a Brits school education, sofa surfing his way around the country, performing hundreds of gigs at open mic nights, posting his own recordings for free on the internet. He showed his mettle by delivering his song stripped right down to basics: t-shirt, jeans, acoustic guitar. You could say he did an Adele and it earned him the first standing ovation of the night. In his second acceptance speech, he thanked his manager for taking him from "a spotty, chubby, ginger teenager to where I am now," by which he presumably meant a spotty, chubby, ginger young adult.

You might call it the New Authenticity, a reaction to the showbusiness fakery that has dominated pop over the past decade. It is as if Simon Cowell cabaret’s TV clones and all the autotuned armies of R’n’B robots have finally worn out the public’s appetite for razzmatazz, so now we just want geeky looking human beings who write meaningful songs and sing them like they really mean them.

It won’t last, of course. Few artists have the confidence to rely on nothing but talent, preferring to draft in batteries of pyrotechnics and dancers in leotards. Coldplay kicked off proceedings with an indoors fireworks display, Florence Welch turned up with a see through skirt and a troupe of histrionic dancers. Noel Gallagher's idea of special effects was to get Chris Martin on the piano but it only serves to demonstrate why some people consider this trend towards unadorned authenticity the New Boring.
British stars are all too often overshadowed by the international glamour of visiting American artists at our national awards ceremony but not on this occasion. In Adele and Coldplay, the UK once again have world beaters that everyone else has to measure up against. The Foo Fighters and Bruno Mars seem minor league by comparison. Rihanna, however, wasn't prepared to follow that script, arriving onstage in a cage crammed with a battalion of semi-naked dancers, and cavorting to a thumpimg techno backing track and exploding balloons full of glitter. Sometimes bigger really is, if not better, then at least, well, bigger.

But the night belonged to Adele. The Brits has never been a critics forum. It is unashamedly populist. It is not the place to argue that PJ Harvey made the most artistically bold and acclaimed album of the year, or that Laura Marling is a female singer-songwriter working at a level beyond any of her contemporaries. This was the year of Adele, and it would have been akin to daylight robbery if the Brits girl hadn’t carried home her Brits. The perfect circle demanded completion.

British Female Solo Artist - Adele
British Male Solo Artist - Ed Sheeran
British Group - Coldplay
British Breakthrough Act - Ed Sheeran
Mastercard British Album of the Year - 21 by Adele
British Single - What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction
International Male Solo Artist - Bruno Mars
International Female Solo Artist - Rihanna
International Group - Foo Fighters
International Breakthrough Act - Lana Del Rey
Outstanding Contribution - Blur

Sourced: Daily Telegraph first article by By Neil McCormick