Adele celebrated success with her album 30, which she released in November. The album sold 600,000 copies last year, the best result among British musicians. Compared to her previous album 25, which the singer released five years earlier, sales of records fell by a fifth, which experts attribute to the increased use of streaming services. She won the song award for her track Easy On Me.
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The singer said she wanted to use her album to explain her son’s divorce from his father, Simon Konecki. “I would like to dedicate the award to my son and his father Simon,” the singer said. “It was not only my journey, but all of ours,” she added. Adele received the same award for her previous albums 21 and 25.
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Other well-known artists from the British music scene were also in the main categories this year, including Ed Sheeran, who won the songwriter of the year award, Little Simz, who was discovery of the year, and Dave and Sam Fender, who both won genre awards.
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Olivia Rodrigo
Photo: Profimedia.cz
In the foreign categories, singer Olivia Rodrigo was successful with her song Good 4 U, and American singer Billie Eilish was the foreign artist of the year. The best foreign band was the American band Silk Sonic.
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A new feature of this year’s British Music Awards was the abolition of the gender categories. The organisers also introduced four new genre awards: alternative or rock act, hip hop, grime or rap act, dance act and pop or R’n’B act.
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The prizes, which have been awarded since 1977, are decided by music industry professionals. The original corps of roughly 1,000 voters was expanded by organizers in 2017 to make it more diverse and gender-balanced.
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