Brit Awards move to Manchester from next year
The Brit Awards are to be held in Manchester for the first time in the history of the ceremony, it has been announced.
The biggest night of the UK music industry calendar has been held in London for the past four decades but will move to the Manchester Co-op Live arena in 2026 and 2027.
The 2026 ceremony on Saturday February 28 will be broadcast exclusively on ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player.
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester said: 'For the Brit Awards to move out of London is a massive coup for Greater Manchester.
'After 48 years, it is great that this prestigious global event is about to arrive in the UK capital of music and culture.
'Greater Manchester has an unparalleled music heritage known around the world, and this summer will play host to some of the biggest gigs on the planet.
'That was only made possible by our strong commitment to new talent and giving emerging artists the opportunities to make their name.
'We thank our friends at the BPI for choosing Manchester and we will pull out all the stops to show they made the right decision.
'Celebrating the Brit Awards right here in the home of 24 hour party people is the next chapter in its story and you can be sure that we will help them do it in style.'
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is the trade body for the UK's music industry.
Next year's Brit Awards will be the first of three years under the stewardship of Sony Music UK, which spearheaded the move to Manchester.
Jason Iley, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music UK & Ireland said: 'This is a very exciting time for The Brit Awards.
'Moving to Manchester, the home of some of the most iconic and defining artists of our lifetime, will invigorate the show and build on the Brits' legacy of celebrating and reinvesting in world-class music.
'Hosting the show in Manchester, with its vibrant cultural history, perfectly captures the spirit and energy of the Brit Awards.
'I can't wait to see the show at the amazing state-of-the art Co-op Live venue.'
Mastercard will continue their long-standing headline sponsorship, now in its 28th year.
Charli XCX was the stand-out star at this year's Brit Awards at London's O2 Arena, taking home five awards including album of the year for her sixth studio release, Brat.
US pop star Sabrina Carpenter was the recipient of the global success award, while former Little Mix star Jade Thirlwall collected the best pop act award.
US pop star Chappell Roan won international song of the year for Good Luck, Babe!
Co-op Live is currently Britain's biggest indoor arena and opened in May 2024 after several delays.
British band Elbow opened the 23,500-capacity venue and since then acts including Sir Paul McCartney and Charli XCX have held gigs.
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Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
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The Guardian
14 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Saddle up for Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter tour
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Its visual storytelling provides an all-singing, all-dancing archive of Black American music that is so alive and dynamic, and which contextualises the voices and instruments you hear. After all, the secondary title for the Cowboy Carter tour is The Rodeo Chitlin' Circuit, a reference to the performance venues that catered to African American patrons and commercially sustained Black performers in the era of Jim Crow segregation. And God, does this show live up to that entertainment tradition. From her fringed chaps and gloves to her custom Versace-print dresses, Beyoncé looks magnificent, while the stage design is grand and kitschy, with two neon bar signs that say 'salon' and 'saloon'. At various points, she flies across the stadium on a giant neon horseshoe and a Cadillac, and she rides a gold mechanical bull for a sultry performance of Tyrant. I first saw Beyoncé on the Formation World Tour when I was 19, and have caught every tour since. This is the most confident and carefree I have seen her – she is visibly having fun. The Cowboy Carter tracks translate so well to the stage, too, with Riiverdance, II Hands II Heaven and Flamenco being particular standouts – on Ya Ya she evokes the ferocious, theatrical rock'n'roll style of Prince and Tina Turner. All the ancestors are summoned for the Chitlin' Circuit. On large screens, during performances and interludes, images of Black America's musical iconography are projected at the audience. There's a clip of Chuck Berry playing Johnny B Goode at Hullabaloo A Go Go in 1965; a 1932 performance of Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club band's melancholy hit Minnie the Moocher; Nina Simone singing I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free at Montreux Jazz 1976; Little Richard blazing through Lucille in 1957; Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing The Lonesome Road in 1941 and Berry blasting You Can't Catch Me in the 1956 film Rock, Rock, Rock! Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion The references are neverending but they don't feel like a fleeting history tour. Instead they emphasise how a genre that has been co-opted and framed as 'not Black' has a long history of African American pioneers, many of whom forged careers in a segregated US and laid a path for so many others, including Beyoncé. It is interesting to me, though, that after the opening performance of Ameriican Requiem, which, live, has the soulful beauty of a cathedral choir, and her cover of the Beatles' Blackbird, Beyoncé then sings The Star-Spangled Banner, taking her cue from the incendiary rendition that Jimi Hendrix performed at Woodstock in 1967 in protest against the Vietnam war. 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Last year, at Kamala Harris's presidential campaign rally in Houston, Beyoncé appeared alongside her friend and former Destiny's Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, describing herself and Rowland as 'proud country Texas women'. Harris had been under fire during that campaign for her support of President Joe Biden's arming of the Israeli state in its onslaught against Gaza. Hendrix's protest, meanwhile, took place under the Democratic president Lyndon B Johnson, who sent Americans to fight in Vietnam, and drew chants from protesters such as: 'Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?' Americana imagery can't be neatly divorced from the imperial aspects of the state – and the musicians who Beyoncé admires knew this well. Even if there are debates still to be had about Beyoncé's political aesthetics (we have been here since at least her self-titled 2013 visual album), you walk away from Cowboy Carter with no doubt that she is the greatest performer and artist of our time. Some have taken the mood of the tour, the montage of images from Beyoncé's personal history, and the return of seemingly long-retired tracks including If I Were a Boy and Why Don't You Love Me as an indication that she is inching towards retirement – but I have never seen a clearer example of a performer who will not be slowed down by naysayers or knee injuries. The rodeo queen rides on. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
BBC News
15 minutes ago
- BBC News
'There was a real gutsiness about them': How the heiresses dubbed the 'dollar princesses' brought US flair to the UK
The rich, glamorous women of the gilded age who married into the English aristocracy faced some challenges – but they were resilient, formidable characters. As TV's The Buccaneers season two begins, and an exhibition in London is devoted to them, we explore the lives of the women who inspired writers and artists. Can the new Duchess of Tintagel steer clear of scandal? Will her fugitive sister, Jinny, keep her baby from the clutches of her husband, the monstrous Lord Seadown? Can Mabel and Honoria's forbidden love flourish? The Buccaneers, Apple TV+'s hit period drama, is back for a second season, and its legions of fans expect answers to all of the above. The show charts the romantic adventures of a group of young American women – two pairs of sisters and their friend – who, looked down upon as nouveau riche by older, grander New York families, come to England in the 1870s and cut a swathe through high society. Fast-moving, fun and visually sumptuous, it looks as though the costume budget alone could dwarf the entire expenditure of lesser shows. It is lavish, colourful escapism – yet the unfinished Edith Wharton novel of 1938 upon which it is based was inspired by a real phenomenon. Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women – 50 of them from New York – married British peers or the younger sons of peers, and many more married into the upper classes. They were dubbed "dollar princesses" and the popular view was that these were purely transactional marriages – cash for class. The women gained a title and status; the often cash-strapped aristocrats got a welcome injection of money to help them fix the leaking roof of the crumbling family seat. "The decline in landed income during the Great Agricultural Depression, beginning in the 1870s, necessitated numerous male aristocrats to seek marital alliances outside the inner social network of the British aristocracy," explains Maureen Montgomery, a historian and Wharton scholar who is currently editing The Buccaneers for the Oxford University Press's The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. "Another factor was the openness of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to wealthy businessmen being part of his inner social circle and his penchant for the beautiful and entertaining daughters of the American bourgeois elite who were travelling in ever larger numbers, after the Civil War, to Europe." The first inklings of a novel to be called The Buccaneers appear in Wharton's notebook for 1924-1928. There she set out the plot, revolving around the "conquest of England by American adventurers & adventuresses/families". "In the summer of 1928, during one of her many annual trips to England in her later years, she visited Tintagel in Cornwall and stayed with her close friend Lady Wemyss at her Cotswold estate, Stanway," Montgomery tells the BBC. "Both of these places became significant settings for the novel." However, Montgomery doesn't believe that there is any one particular story or person that the writer drew upon. "Wharton had close friends among the British aristocracy, and went to weekend country house parties. She personally knew a number of titled Americans. She would have been familiar with various scenarios for these marriages, how they were received, the different motives for marrying," she says. Some historians have suggested Consuelo Vanderbilt as one of the possible models for The Buccaneers' Conchita Closson. Considered a great beauty, Consuelo was a "dollar princess" whose father made a fortune in railroads. Her dowry was worth tens of millions in today's money. She was more or less bullied by her mother into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, and was said to have wept behind her veil at the altar on her wedding day in 1895 (one of nine US heiresses to marry English aristocrats that year). More like this:• The true story of the first ever 'rock star' chef• Age of Innocence: How a US classic defined its era• How history's brutal witch trials resonate now The marriage was deeply unhappy. "Sunny", as the Duke was known, wasted little time in telling her he'd only married her for her money and in order to save Blenheim Palace, the ducal seat. In her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold, Conseulo wrote of a Blenheim Palace butler who had drowned himself: "As one gloomy day succeeded another I began to feel a deep sympathy for him." Her marriage produced two children but both Consuelo and her husband had lovers. Consuelo had been preceded into the aristocracy by the godmother after whom she was named. The Cuban-American heiress Consuelo Yznaga Montagu, another model for Conchita, married George Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, in 1876 and became the Duchess of Manchester when he inherited the title. The profligate duke burned through his wife's money and had numerous affairs. Consuelo, who is mentioned in Wharton's notebook, was reportedly very close to the Prince of Wales. 'Swashbuckling beauties' Both Consuelos feature in Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits, an exhibition of 18 works by John Singer Sargent at Kenwood House on London's Hampstead Heath. The show has been curated by Wendy Monkhouse, English Heritage Senior Curator (South), and is the result of two years' work. "There was a real gutsiness about these heiresses," Monkhouse tells the BBC. "They were brave. They had a hard time entering British society as foreigners, and foreigners of whom everybody was envious and resentful and wanted to take down a peg or two because of this 'buccaneer' trope." They were, supposedly, swashbuckling beauties who leapt aboard the good ship Britannia and, with piratical ruthlessness, bagged themselves a baron or an earl or maybe even a duke. The English newspaper editor WT Stead used the expression "gilded prostitution" when writing about these transatlantic marriages. There was opposition from the US too, at the highest level. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his ambassador to the UK Whitelaw Reid in 1906, "I thoroly [sic]… dislike these international marriages… which are based upon the sale of the girl for her money and the purchase of the man for his title." And plenty of ordinary Americans hated the idea of all that wealth leaving the country and being squandered on wastrel British aristocrats. This wasn't what they'd fought a war of independence for. But Monkhouse argues that the moniker "dollar princesses" does the women a disservice. "I think it's a term that has been tossed around for a hundred years without very much thought, apart from in academic circles," she says. "The more that you delve into it, the more it falls apart. I think Consuelo Vanderbilt, though she doesn't call herself a dollar princess, sort of defined the genre in that she was a very rich American who was, not by her own choice, married for a title and then was unhappy." However, other women whose images are featured in the exhibition had very different stories. Daisy Leiter, glamorous and independent-minded daughter of a Chicago real estate magnate, was considered quite the catch and not just for her money, as Sargent's magnificent portrait shows. She was bombarded with proposals but married Henry Howard, the 19th Earl of Suffolk. It seems to have been a very happy love match and produced three sons. In later life, Daisy further exemplified the adventurous spirit of many of these women by becoming a helicopter pilot. Another of Sargent's subjects was Cora, Countess of Strafford. Her name is echoed by that of a famous fictional "dollar princess", Cora, Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey. Julian Fellowes has said that one of the inspirations for the series was a book about American heiresses called To Marry an English Lord. The real Cora was a Southern belle who married the 4th Earl of Strafford after the death of her first husband, toothpaste baron Samuel Colgate. The Earl died just five months after the wedding when he fell on to railway tracks at Potter's Bar. The incident prompted much gossip, as did the fact that Cora wore her coronet sideways at Edward VII's coronation. One of the best known of the women in the Heiress exhibition, represented in both an oil portrait and a charcoal drawing, is Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the daughter of a Virginian railway tycoon and the first woman to take her seat as an MP in the House of Commons. She had regular clashes with Winston Churchill, whose own mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of a wealthy New York speculator and financier. There's a splash of politics in the new season of The Buccaneers that sees Nan realising that her elevated social status gives her power and influence, and beginning to wield it. Buccaneers showrunner Katherine Jakeways read extensively on the "dollar princesses" before writing began on the series, and she draws on their stories, as well as the Wharton text. "You imagine that the girls who came over were interesting to the men because (a) they were beautiful, (b) they were American and (c) they were rich, but actually what's really interesting is that (d) they were much better educated and much more encouraged to be confidently involved in society [than their English counterparts]," she tells the BBC. "In New York their opinions were sought whereas girls in England, as we show with Honoria in Season one, were asked not to speak or have an opinion." Like their real-life counterparts, the women in the show don't conform to reductive stereotypes. "Our characters are complicated and have depth, and we try to make all the relationships have some kind of resonance for a contemporary audience," says Jakeways. "And hopefully it's just really good fun." Season two is another rollercoaster ride that remixes all the successful ingredients from the first series. Will there be a season three? I'd bet an heiress's dowry on it. The Buccaneers Season Two premieres on Apple TV+ on 18 June. Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits is at Kenwood House, London, until 5 October. -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
