Brit Awards boss: The middle classes dominate the music world
'We all yearn for diversity in music. That doesn’t in any way make anything that’s successful less valid'
So Noel Gallagher was right after all. There is a shortage of working-class bands in an increasingly middle-class music world, the executive in charge of the Brit Awards has admitted.
The annual music industry showcase is set to celebrate the success of clean-cut stars including Sam Smith, helped to stardom with a payout awarded to his currency-broker mother, Ed Sheeran and the Cambridge-educated classical-dance group Clean Bandit, at the O2 Arena on Wednesday night.
Gallagher recently bemoaned the middle-class state of pop, saying: “The working classes have not got a voice any more. There doesn’t seem to be a noise coming from the council estates.”
Saying that rapper Plan B was the last artist to produce a “proper protest song”, Max Lousada, CEO of Warner Music, home to Sheeran and Clean Bandit, and the chair of the Brit Awards committee, said: “He was uncompromising in his artistic conviction and his anger at that division of wealth in society. I just don’t see that represented in young artists.” He added: “We all yearn for diversity in music. That doesn’t in any way make anything that’s successful less valid.”
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