A vapid Brits highlights the need for a countercultural response | Alex Niven

In the past we've seen artists treating awards ceremonies with contempt. Let's see a rekindling of this subversive spirit

Wednesday's Brit awards set a new benchmark for coma-inducing tediousness. Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick hailed the event as a "triumph of the bland", while Alexis Petridis complained in the Guardian that the Brits merely replicate the sales-based hierarchy of the Top 40. When outgoing Brits chairman David Joseph claimed that he'd given the event "gravitas", he was fighting a losing battle against a high tide of public indifference.

Watching the Brits, you can't help feeling that pop culture in the 2010s is suffering from a massive energy deficit. What's surprising, however, is not the torpor of these PR pageants or the awfulness of their star players. It's the fact that intelligent people have come to take them seriously.

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