With The Meteor Ireland Music Awards now in its tenth year expectations were high. The event was held last Friday at the RDS Simmons court with Amanda Byram on hosting duties for the second year running. Despite the smaller setting and budget than the Brit Awards, which were held earlier in the week, the Meteor Awards managed to hold its own with it attracting some of the biggest names in show business. Unlike other award shows The Meteors are known for having a mixture of mainstream artists and lesser know acts.
Lady of the moment Florence and the Machine opened the show with a rousing performance of her smash hit ‘You’ve Got The Love’. Florence later took home the award for Best International Band, even though it is well publicized that Florence is not actually a band, but the recording name for Florence Welch, with ‘The Machine’ referring to the many collaborators that she works with.
There were no surprises as Westlife won Best Irish Pop Act for the tenth consecutive year meaning that no other act has ever won the award with host Amanda Byram pointing it should now be re-named the Westlife award. Later in the night Westlife returned to the stage to perform their number-one hit ‘What About Now’.
The winners of the highly competitive radio awards were Ray Foley from Today FM for Best Radio DJ-National and Leigh Doyle from Beat FM, who had missed out on the award for three years, who was named Best Radio DJ-Regional.
Snow Patrol was named Best Irish Band. The band were scheduled to perform but were forced to pull out of the awards when lead-singer Gary Lightbody broke his jaw. They were later replaced by Dizzee Rascal and up-and-coming Aussie band The Temper Trap, who gave a stellar performance of their worldwide hit ‘Sweet Deposition’.
Other performances on the night came from Bell X1 and Pixie Lott, who despite being nominated for Best International Female walked away with no awards on the night. But they were in good company. U2 received no awards for the first time in the history of The Meteors, losing out in all three categories that they were nominated in. They were beaten by The Coronas, who took home Best Irish Album for Tony Was An Ex-Con. Best Live Performance went to The Script for their performance at last year’s Oxegen. Relatively unknown Wallis Bird won Best Irish Female, with the surprising omission of Imelda May from the category. Best Traditional/Folk unsurprisingly went to Sharon Shannon.
During the cermony tributes were paid to late singers Liam Clancy and Stephen Gately. After winning Best Irish Male, Christy Moore dedicated his award to Clancy when he accepted his award in a pre-recorded video. Boyzone members Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch than paid tribute Gately, introducing a video montage of his life.
Colin Farrell made a surprise appearance presenting the award for Best International Album to Paulo Nutini for Sunny Side Up. Other presenters on the night included Jerry Ryan, Michelle Heaton, The Saturdays’ singer Una Healy, TV3 weather man Martin King, Inglorious Basterds star Michael Fassenbender and Liam Cunningham.
In the non-public voting categories ex-property developer Niall Mellon was awarded the Humanitarian Award for his work in South Africa. In the past 8 years The Niall Mellon Foundation has built over 10,000 homes and housed 80,000 people in South Africa. U2 bassist Adam Clayton presented Lord Henry Mont Charles, Slane Castle promoter and owner, with the Industry Award. During his acceptance speech Lord Mont Charles thanked “all the acts that had shownup to play Slane, with the exception of Eminem”.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Brian Kennedy by Louis Walsh and X-Factor mentor Sunita. Kennedy then performed with the Dublin Gospel Choir.
In celebration of the 10th year of the awards a new category was announced called Most Promising New Artist of 2010. The new award is designed for up-and-coming artists and bands that are unsigned. Submissions opened in January. A music industry panel narrowed the entries down to ten acts then the public was invited to vote for the winning act, with Amasis winning on the night.
As the winners Amasis will appear at Oxegen and have 150 copies of their debut single released, perform live on Pop 4 on TG4, have one day’s recording in Grouse Lodge Recording Studios with an additional day’s mastering in Masterlabs, have a CD sleeve designed, have a photo shoot with top celebrity photographer Barry McCall and have radio/Pr distribution.
After the show it was announced that Lady Gaga, continuing her winning streak at award shows had won Best International Female. However, despite being in town to play her sold-out concerts at The O2, Lady Gaga neither collected her award nor performed at the show. Michael Bublé was named Best International Male and Lenard Cohen won Best International Live Performance.
Despite Bell X1’s 3 nominations they failed to pick up any awards. Florence and the Machine only walked away with one of the 3 awards she was nominated for. Laura Izibor also walked away empty handed.
The Script rounded of the night by performing ‘Breakeven’, but when the cameras stopped rolling The Script continued to play on as a thank you to fans for their win and to make up for missing the show last year. By the end of the night the band had belted out 4 of their hits. It was then time for the common folk to head home, as the winners and losers of the night were whisked off to their showbiz after-bash.
