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Nudity, swearing, petulance, club anthems, more nudity and a woman dressed as a horse – the 2025 Brit Awards had it all. Charli XCX was the big winner, taking home five prizes in all – including best artist, best album and song of the year. US star Chappell Roan picked up two awards; while Ezra Collective, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines DC and Stormzy got one apiece. But no-one’s only interested in all that. Here’s what really went down at the 2025 ceremony at London’s O2 Arena.
Most predictable winner: Charli XCX./
The pop star’s seventh album, Brat, captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way that few artists ever manage. Released in June, the record combined abrasive dance-floor beats, soaring hooks and meme-friendly artwork; as the 32-year-old assessed her place in the music industry, the real and imaginary rivals she’s accumulated along the way, and whether or not to leave it all behind to have a baby. In the star’s own words, the album was “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”. Just as everyone was absorbing that, she hired a bunch of guest stars – Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lorde, Addison Rae, Bon Iver – and re-recorded an entirely new, sometimes superior, version of the album. Critics called it “pop music for the future” and praised the way its “painfully relatable” lyrics captured Charli’s coming of age.
I feel like dance music, electronic music, gets a really bad rep because everyone is like, “It’s not that deep, is it? And I kind of feel it is. This genre of music, for me, is euphoric, it allows me to escape, it allows me to feel on such a deep level.
Listen, this was never going to be anything other than Charli’s night.
The love is a performance by Windrush generation-friendly act Sault. Blood Money session is another stand-out winner.
A lot of viewers were left perplexed when Jack Whitehall sat down with Danny Dyer and what appeared to be his date: A woman with a horse for a face (we’re not being unkind, see above for proof). Well, it turns out that Danny’s horse was a German DJ who goes by the name of HorsegiirL and keeps their identity hidden behind a mask. Sort of like Deadmau5, but with fetlocks.
Ezra Collective made history by becoming the first jazz band to win the Brit Award for best group – beating previous title-holders like Coldplay, The Cure and Bring Me The Horizon. Taking to the stage, frontman Femi Koleoso had a few words to say about cuts to music education, and the lack of funding for youth clubs like Tomorrow’s Warriors – where his band got their start.
This moment right here is because of the great youth clubs, and the great teachers and the great schools that support young people playing music. The reason we continue to bang this drum is because so many of the problems that face greater society in the UK… we’re unsure of how to fix it, but the solution lies with giving a young person a trumpet, the solution lies in giving a young person a saxophone. Because when you do that, you give them a dream, an aspiration and a goal.
To prove his point, he invited the London youth group Kinetika Bloco onto the stage of the O2, to blast through Ezra Collective’s infectiously upbeat jazz anthem Shaking Body.
This year’s Brit Award trophies, designed by Gabriel Moses, were cast in bronze… And they were heavy. Weighing 1.6kg each, you could break a toe if you dropped one. And Charli had to pick up four of the things for her winner’s photo. It took approximately six people to arrange them in her arms (“don’t push them between my boobs”, she squealed at one point) before she was ready for the flashbulbs. “Is this lame?” she asked at the last moment. “It feels lame.” Then she dropped them all and fell to the floor in a fit of giggles.
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