Music Video Awards 2023

To the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead for the Sharks Music & Video Awards.

I must confess to being a little out of touch with this exciting and evolving industry. Once upon a time, addicted to both Top of the Pops and MTV, I was au fait with most music videos. Though most of them seemed to feature either Madness popping up out of dustbins or Duran Duran miming on a yacht.

So what better occasion to get up to speed than seeing all the Sharks Music & Video Awards on the Everyman’s big screen and through its majestic sound system?

The first good omen was Gary Crowley presenting the awards. Eternally enthusiastic and perennially youthful, Gary has championed new music since the 1980s and it was instantly apparent that he’d lost none of his passion for it.

What’s more, instead of just letting the winners exit the stage in silence with their gongs, he asked them how their made their videos and why. This is how we discovered, among many other things, that one winning entry required 1,300 individual oil paintings

Every Shark Gold Award was richly deserved and, nice though it would be to heap superlatives on every winner, I’ve had to draw a few highlights from a metaphorical hat.

First, Spindle and Loyle Carner who won Best Artiste Performance for “Hate”. My opinion was the very opposite of hate, especially as Lloyd co-directed his own astonishing performance.

Best Writing/Idea/Concept award went to Riff Raff Films and Hak Baker for the insanely brilliant Telephones 4 Eyes. Wait till you see it - properly brilliant and properly insane.

Smuggler took Gold in the Best Music Video category for “Point and Kill “by Little Simz featuring Obongjayar. Watch this at your peril because its hypnotic beats will remain in your head forever.

And of course Em Cooper from Jelly. She took “I’m Only Sleeping”, possibly the most Beatlesy record ever made and revived it with a breathtaking symphony of animation. It triumphed in – you’re ahead of me, aren’t you? - the Best Animation category. This was the video that required the 1,300 individual oil paintings.

The biggest winner of all, however, was the entire music and video industry, simply because of the prodigious talents of those who work in it.

What was striking was how young the winners were. Older people – particular those in advertising – have become a little too fond of saying how younger people lack creative spark and originality. If they’d seen the screen at the Everyman light up time after time with the brilliance and ingenuity of such young and absurdly talented film makers, they’d never say that again.

A Gold Shark Award is fast becoming the Gold Standard for creativity from around the world and you could almost hear the drum roll at the end of the evening when Gary announced the big winners.

Record Label of the Year went to Universal Music and Stink Films were named Production Company of the Year. Then the two Grands Prix received the grandest cheers of all.

Motherland took the Grand Prix (Ireland) for Junior Brother’s This is My Body while the International Grand Prix went to Stink Films and Grin Machine for Joji’s Glimpse of Us.

You can see all the winners by searching Music and Video 2023 at www.kinsalesharks.com/search

And trust me, you’ll see real creativity at its finest.