Some Music News from Across the Pond: Dean Blunt Pranked the NME Awards Last Night

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

The NME Awards took place last night, featuring such music luminaries as Jarvis Cocker and Jamie T, others associated with holding guitars like Dave Grohl, Royal Blood, and, of course, the entire cast of ongoing rock sitcom: Kasabian (now in its fifth season!).

It was a fun awards ceremony, although a difficult one to mentally comprehend at times, as prizes for praise and hatred were thrown in seemingly random directions. Pop punk kids 5 Seconds of Summer were labeled “worst band,” finding themselves lumped into a shitbags category alongside Nigel Farage who will probably be absolutely gutted to see he’s been methodically ripped apart by the savage title of “Villain of the Year.” Elsewhere, Jake Bugg won “Best Solo Act” in exchange for not releasing anything since 2013, and Muse were praised in the “Best Community” category for having an internet forum.

However, the prize that came with the most joyous confusion was The Philip Hall Radar Award, one which prides itself on recognizing promising newcomers. In the last decade, the award has garnered itself an excellent reputation for becoming the new music version of a witness protection scheme, vanquishing winners like The Drums, Glasvegas, The Naked & Famous, and The Twang to the outer limits of obscurity.

Last night though, it shocked us all. Firstly by awarding it to a genuine precious talent in Dean Blunt, and secondly by calling him a promising newcomer despite having his name to about seven albums in total across various projects.

Blunt, who gets spotted less than a South Asian snow leopard, has made his name for lots of things: abstract videos, canceled stage plays, a ton of beautiful albums, crying onstage, playing a butt load of pranks on anyone that dares to come near him, and generally being the weirdest and most inventive motherfucker in contemporary British music. The last person you’d expect to see at the NME Awards basically, and it was no surprise that he decided to rib the NME Awards by sending a black guy in a Strokes-via-Camden-Market indie jacket to collect the award.

The problem is, it seems quite a few people thought the guy on stage was actually Dean Blunt.

Like… the NME’s own live blog

Or the photographer who snapped him…

You can imagine Dean Blunt’s thought process here when he was awarded an emerging artist award—with the litany of mistaken identities in the mainstream press recently, like The Metro’s random black guy image of “Wiley.” Might as well test how much they actually know my music, might as well send some random guy posing as me, might as well put him in a crappy indie jacket, might as well thank NME for everything. See what comes of it.

In the words of the “Dean” on stage last night:

“Thanks to the man upstairs, thanks NME. I finally made it!”

*UPDATE*

As if shit couldn’t get better, Dean Blunt literally just uploaded his new video when we posted this and it opens with a quote from a Noisey interview with Idris Elba about Dean’s music. Watch below, and read the Idris interview here.

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