Winning Best British Single at this year's Brit awards was a win for One Direction, but an even bigger one for Twitter.
There is no denying What Makes You Beautiful is the perfect boy band song, it gives girls of all ages the impression that boys as cheeky as Liam, Harry, Zayn, Niall and Louis could find them attractive because it's what's on the inside that counts, obviously. The song has as much depth and meaning as The Pussycat Dolls' Don't Cha, and so was their win a crime against the internationally acclaimed Someone Like You
For those that follow the five members of '1D' on Twitter you will know that they have been self-promoting their nomination and asking/begging fans to vote. All above board but not when the majority of their fan base is teenage girls who are, according to the Brits rules, unable to vote more than once.
A search of "One Direction Brits" on the social-networking site has excited teenage girls with the ambition of seeing Harry Styles naked tweeting that they voted more than once and created multiple e-mail addresses in order for their vote to count. Not illegal, bending the rules slightly, but also making it more unfair on Adele and making the British music scene look like a joke for the internationals looking in.
Speaking to my 14 year-old sister, who at her own admission voted over 20 times she acknowledges Adele's song is better and agrees with me that the award should have been named "who has the most followers on Twitter?", especially with reports that 89% of the votes in this category were for One Direction.
Adele stole the 2011 show with her faultless performance of Someone Like You, it catapulted her to international fame and although the year brought with it some medical scares this song and this year has in her own words "changed her life forever". She broke records last week at the Grammy's by winning more awards in one night than any other British nominee in history and yet she's beaten in her hometown by five boys, barely out of school who are apparently going to 'make it big' around the world in 2012.
Speaking to Fearne Cotton in 2011 about how unactive she is on Twitter she said "I'm not going to mug off my fans when I've got something to promote" and so the Best British Female did just that and relied on her music to continue her career rather than begging for awards. It seems now, that maybe Twitter and other social networking websites (apart from Bebo and MySpace) are the future for voting.
The thought of Adele not winning an award is unthinkable in the USA. She cleaned up at the Grammy's beating of competition from the likes of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Congratulations to One Direction on the most un-deserved BRIT since Liberty X but it was a bigger kick in the teeth than ITV rushing her acceptance speech.
Someone Like You will live on as one of Britain's best musical exports of all time, time will only tell if One Direction can make the same mark in music history.