Charli xcx, Jade and Ezra Collective’s Brit awards cap a vintage year for adventurous pop | Alexis Petridis

Playing music that is as smart as it is successful, Brit winners made articulate calls for artist development - while host Jack Whitehall was brilliantly risky

The Brits has long been in the business of underlining success; upsets and shock wins aren't really the point. If they seemed moderately more exciting in 2025 than in years past, that's partly because Jack Whitehall is a better, riskier, funnier host than anyone else offered the job in recent years - he mocked Stormzy for his promotion of McDonald's, made a joke about amyl nitrate and called Coldplay the musical missionary position" - and because 2024 was a vintage year for mainstream pop, dominated by music that was characterful and hugely successful.

If Charli xcx - and producer AG Cook - hadn't been lavishly rewarded for her agenda-setting album Brat, you would have wondered what had gone wrong: likewise Chappell Roan, whose ardent emotion both in and out of the recording studio makes her one of pop's most cheering recent developments: she responded to her two awards with acceptance speeches that called upon the music industry to offer more long-term development support to artists - a theme also picked up on by Myles Smith, winner of the rising star award - and shouted out the trans community and sex workers.