All Of The Times British Girl Bands Were Snubbed At The Brits In Favour Of Men

Last night, Little Mix made history as the first female act to ever win a Brit Award for best group. It was a momentous occasion, but also a confusing one as people wondered: Why on earth has a girl band never one this award before?

Britain has been home to the best girl bands globally for decades. We’ve had the Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, Sugababes, All Saints, Bananarama, The Saturdays, Atomic Kitten, Eternal and Cleopatra – to name only the ones that made Top 20 charts. And yet, in Brit Awards 44-year history, not one of them has won best group. Spice Girls won a contribution to music award despite never winning best group, only nominated for the accolade once in their 16-years together despite selling over 90million records worldwide.

‘The fact that a girl band has never won this award really does speak volumes,’ Jade Thirlwall said during Little Mix’s acceptance speech. Pointing to the only obvious reason for so many snubs: misogyny.

‘It's not easy being a female in the U.K. pop industry,’ Leigh-Anne Pinnock elaborated. ‘We've seen white male dominance, misogyny, sexism and lack of diversity. We're proud of how we've stuck together, stood our ground, surrounded ourselves with strong women, and are now using our voices more than ever.’

Their speech hit home with viewers, 'British girl bands', 'Spice Girls Brits', 'Girls Aloud Brits' and 'Little Mix acceptance speech' all began trending on Google as people wondered how none of the other iconic female acts had ever won this award.

The Brit Awards may have been a place where rock and indie music was fawned over while pop hits were scoffed at, but no girl band ever winning this award goes beyond music snobbery – that’s clear just from the male bands that have won alone.

Since 1977, Coldplay have won Best Group four times (nominated eight), Arctic Monkeys have won three times and The 1975, Dire Straits, Manic Street Preachers, Simply Red and Travis have all won twice each. Radiohead has received seven nominations, One Direction four and Take That four too.

Time and time again, men have had ample opportunities to win, and have done on multiple occasions while girl bands that have achieved global acclaim are left by the wayside. Spice Girls won favourite group at the American Music Awards a year after losing best group at the Brits to Manic Street Preachers.

Some might say the Brits favour creative talent over critical success, prioritising bands that feel quintessentially British by their genre choice. But even that alone has roots in misogyny. So often, women are excluded from rock and indie genres, forced into the more sexualised, dance-heavy pop genre that makes them more palatable to mass audiences where their writhing bodies can be bought and sold.

When we award certain musicians for their talent then, we must take into account all of the ways misogyny runs rampant through the music industry. We must weight the achievements of women who not only outperform men so often in style, choreography and mere effort, but the fact that they’ve achieved critical success alone in an industry that sets them up to fail. We must value how they consistently reinvent and best themselves in an effort to stay relevant in a society where women in the public eye aren’t allowed to age on screen.

All of Britain’s girl bands fought so many blatant and invisible barriers that they never received their acclaim for. As Jade said in her speech, Little Mix’s award is a symbolic win for all of the snubbed girl bands that were cast aside for men consistently praised for doing half the work women in the music industry put in. It shouldn’t have taken this long, but with it we can hope this isn’t merely performative feminism, but a promise of real inclusivity in future.

Click through for all of the 2021 Brit Award winners...