Harry Styles, fake stage invaders and a censored Peter Mandelsohn joke: The biggest moments at the Brit Awards | music

Harry Styles gave the first performance of his era, Kiss All the Time

Styles opened the show with his comeback single, Aperture, which went to number one in the UK in the week of release and is falling rather quickly down the charts, perhaps because it represents a real weird take on pop music at the moment. Cheerful yet a bit distant, it evokes the feeling of being on the dance floor, slightly away from it, staring at the human melee all around you. And that’s proven here, with a performance in which Styles appears in that moment, dancing with his big band and backing singers, dancing in time with dancers in swirly T-shirts and sunglasses — yet he’s also one level above the moment, never allowing himself to dizzy with more than a few smiles. His vocal lines are reminiscent of master of the good, warm note, Kings of Convenience and Whitest Boy Alive singer Erlend Oye, and I notice a touch of David Bowie here too: an echo of his own tailoring and handsomeness as Styles ages, as does the way Bowie performs, with his thousand-yard stare also taking to the fore.

Olivia Dean perfectly expressed the art of love

The night belonged to Olivia Dean, a four-time award winner for outstanding international material on her album The Art of Loving. In her acceptance speech, she said her winning album “is just about love, and loving each other in a world that feels so unloving right now,” and that was not only expressed well in the record itself — it’s so vital to the possibility of love, even when it acknowledges potential hurt — and she embodied that spirit in her performance of “Man I Need.” Part of Dean’s appeal was how much she actually enjoyed what she was doing, filling her performances with squirms of pleasure and “Oh, it’s happening!” Her facial expression, and that’s how it was here, as she leaned into all the swoon curves of the man I needed. The joy at the first flush of love, the joy of romantic pursuit, were also written in every one of her movements.

Mark Ronson’s influence was clear

Ronson received the Outstanding Contribution to Music Award, and the accompanying performance demonstrated the strange and deeply moving path he has taken through pop music. Still looking as maniacal and boyish as he did two decades ago, he happily scratched vinyl while giving Ghostface Killah a gentle roll through Ooh Wee. Then we move on to the Amy Winehouse material, and you see again how ambitious, even ill-advised, Ronson’s vision seemed to some at the time: slow symphonic material, or the music of big bands like Valerie, which quickly returned to the orchestral pop and jazz of the pre-Beatles revolution? Today, Ray plays that sound in arenas, and indeed on this British awards scene, thanks to the world that Ronson has reshaped. It’s a shame Bruno Mars didn’t make an effort to perform Uptown Funk here, especially since he has a new album of his own to promote – surely the phone calls were sent to him? – So credit surprise guest Dua Lipa for bringing some A-list stars to Dance the Night and Electricity.

Basic expressionism in

Ray’s rendition of “Nightingale Lane,” a song about the London street where she watched her first love drift away from their relationship, made it seem less a song and more a means of uninhibited expression, culminating in a stunningly wordless exorcism of pain. There was a similar feel to Berghain’s performance of Rosalía, aided by Björk who, as Björk is wont to do, wore a lively triptych topped with a badly damaged lampshade. Once again, this is not a song in the traditional sense, but rather a series of vocal bends that show the passion of the Catalan artist, moving from opera to hard techno music. He was great in the truest sense of the word, and yet, while that sound and fury meant absolutely nothing, it didn’t mean much. Wolf Alice’s Ellie Roussel performed this expressive essence much better: her melodious howl at the end of The Sofa was all the more difficult for being at the climax of a fully orchestrated and elaborate song. It was an act of pure freedom, in a song about the importance of that.

Don’t let 90s indie legends pay tribute to you

If we’re being generous, there was something of a wayward musicality and an interesting pause in Bobby Gillespie’s introduction of Noel Gallagher as songwriter of the year, although his lyrics were a bit too hackneyed for the usually jaded rock’n’roller: he described Oasis reunion concerts as “like being in a cup final where everyone’s backing the same team, and everyone’s winning”. But it had better be better than Tim Burgess’ tense lines as he paid tribute to the late Mane. Perhaps the organizers should have asked Shaun Ryder and Bez to do all that, since they entertainingly treated their conversation with Jack Whitehall like a chemically enhanced afternoon pub session.

Sombr keeps the publicity stunt alive

For a moment we thought we might have another ’90s-style British moment, like when Jarvis Cocker shook his ass during Michael Jackson’s Earth, or one of the Chumbawambas doused John Prescott with a bucket of ice water. A man rushed onto the stage during a performance by revered and flamboyant American musician Somber, and was escorted off the stage by security. But no, it was a ruse: He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Sombr is a homewrecker,” a reference to the morally questionable lovemaking that is written about in the fun new single “Homewrecker.”

The British can still offer a little advantage

Although Stage Invaders was fake, there were some moments that would have made ITV’s censors sweat, especially after last week’s disastrous BAFTA incident where the N-word was allowed to appear on the television broadcast. Jack Whitehall relished this, saying ITV had put “the guy who did the BAFTAs” on censorship duty, even though in reality he proved more risk averse. Amidst an abundance of extinguished F-bombs, even Whitehall was considered to have gone too far at one point. Greetings to the culture minister, Lisa Nandy, his conversations were completely silenced: “This must be the politicians’ table. I wonder who else is here? I think I saw Peter Mandelson on the list – no, sorry, that was another list.” Likewise, no one in the house heard EZ’s Max Bassin say “Free Palestine, fuck ICE” during his award acceptance speech — even though it was very clear — so Jacob Alon, who was silently photographed holding the keffiyeh aloft as Sharon Osbourne spoke, may have been the more effective protest.

Another acceptance speech came from Wolf Alice’s Rowsell as the band won Group of the Year. You may have tried to cram too much into this quick survey about the ills of the music industry, but it all needed to be said: “It’s worth noting that despite the billions of pounds the live sector contributes to our economy, 30 independent venues have closed in the last year, 6,000 jobs have been lost, and more than half of small venues report making no profit at all. Bands and artists should not have to be a battle for survival, nor should we be dependent on services or funding from anyone. Plans from To do things at a level we feel proud of doesn’t have to feel like a golden ticket, but it is a viable career decision for anyone from any background because you only have to look around today and see how proud we are of the contribution to British music and how important it is to nurture and protect the amazing music scene in the UK.