Remember When The Brit Awards Weren't Shit?

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

Remember when the Brit Awards weren’t just an excuse the entire music industry made up in order to get drunk on someone else’s credit card and end the night in the hotel room of a semi-famous pop star? No? Us neither, but that’s a good thing. All of our favorite Brit moments have been born out of debauchery. I mean, you’d have to be at least five Long Island Ice Teas deep to even consider pairing The Klaxons and Rihanna.

Tonight's ceremony kicks off at 3 PM EST and will feature live performances from Justin Bieber, Adele, Coldplay, The Weeknd, Little Mix, Jess Glynne, James Bay's hat, and also Rihanna is rumored to be performing with Drake. If that sounds all a bit much then don't worry, it's being hosted by Ant and Dec, which ought to bring things down a few notches. We'll be following the whole thing on our live-blog, eating the best/worst snacks imaginable and using the Definitive Brits Drinking Game we invented to consume more alcohol than recommended, but until then, here's some Brit Award moments that managed to elevate the ceremony above the usual dishwater narrative of week-night television.

Despite being flanked by two giant roll-on deodorants, Kylie managed to give the wipe-clean sex sounds of "Blue Monday" even more loin, making you want to do unspeakable things on the nearest stainless steel surface.

Ronnie Wood’s impetuous sleaze-ridden attempts at trying to hit on American Beauty star Thora Birch, who is at least 30 years younger, are made all the more entertaining by Ronnie throwing his drink over a random stage intruder called "BRANDON BLOCK", and then standing on the stage looking confused.

Look at this face though, she’s definitely having a great time.

We will not forget.

A long time ago, before he wrote the 50th Law, a book which interweaved his life story with parables of Socrates and Dostoyevsky, 50 Cent took some stimulus from Crime and Punishment for his Brit Awards performance. Kerry Katona is interrupted by a video of a mock detention and interrogation by a policeman who appears to have learnt the tricks of his trade from Mr Plod off of Noddy. Fiddy then runs to the stage, managing to evade helicopter searchlights but hasn't realised that he’s spilt Petit Filous all over his trousers. Eventually, your mind is allowed to gently flutter to the memory of "In Da Club" soundtracking your first dry hump during the Year 9 French Exchange.

This is even better than toast. Seeing as it took place in the same ceremony as the Steps Abba medley I have searched the breadth of our island in vain for a photo of the screwface Whitney must have pulled while watching H straddle a chair. To no avail.

Back in 2002, some clever marketing executive decided that it would be a good idea to get living caricatures Shaggy and Ali G on a track together and get them to perform it at the Brits, AKA a really great moment for television and a bad moment for both careers. Unfortunately, because this glorious performance exists in an era when every televised moment wasn’t uploaded to YouTube hundreds of times, made into GIFs, and re-blogged over every single website, no footage exists. But if you use your mind, like old people have to, then you’ll remember.

A few years after Amy Winehouse threw some form of spherical fruit at her Best Female Artist adversary Dido’s album poster shouting “I HATE YOU DIDO”, Amy got super famous and Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong was still called that. In this rendition of "Valerie", Amy minces around on her vertiginous toenails so endearingly that you can almost ignore Mark Ronson using one of those two necked guitars that are smugger than dolphins.

Say what you like about the Gallagher brothers being a bunch of pricks who just happened to make the best music since The Beatles, but at least they know how to have a laugh unlike every other dickhead that has ever tried to dress like John Lennon working as a bin man.

Remember that bucolic time before triangles became so overexposed that an Essex school had to ban triangular flapjacks? Rihanna still had sleeves and The Klaxons wore tunics fringed with womb lining.