The Brits announce that dance is dead

The next Brit Awards - being held in London on 9th February - is the 25th anniversary.

And, I'm pleased to see, they'll be a new category of "best British live act", which at last recognises that the British music scene is primarily a live music scene, and that there's a massive wealth of live talent that succeeds in paying their bills without ever getting near the charts.

Or at least that's how it should be. The reality will of course be the normal bullshit, of no significance to the real world. The shortlist is already forming in my head, and will undoubtably contain The Darkness and Franz Ferdinand.

Now, I'm not saying they're not worthy live bands. What I am saying is that they're not the only ones, and frankly, they're far from the best seen gracing a stage this year.

The new award is being squeezed in by squeezing out the Dance Act category. Now it's true that dance music is of less prominence again now after around ten-ish years of sales domination, and that rock-based music is back on the rise.

But that doesn't mean that dance music is dead: in fact, dance music is again going through an exciting time of innovation, and it's just chart/dance blandness that's on the way out.

This year's Brit Award nominations will be announced on Monday 10 January. But unless you write a crap tabloid newspaper 'music' column, do you really care?