International Female Solo Artist

Entertainment

With the exception of one dreamy candidate, this year’s nominees for International Female Solo Artist at the BRIT Awards 2010 certainly show if nothing else that standing out is what it’s all about.

Lady GaGa has enjoyed a steady rise this year to become one of the most gloriously OTT pop stars of the modern age, a bit like Madonna with more talent and less inhibitions.

If there was any justice in the world Bad Romance would be the global national anthem, and we’d be treated to a singalong of it at least three times a day to keep our spirits up.

Ladyhawke has a similar spiky attitude, injecting it into raucous electro-rock anthems with a beguiling Antipodean edge. Crikey! She’s been compared to some guy called Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac, though I guess some of those 70s rockers did look pretty feminine with all that long hair and make-up.

Meanwhile Norah Jones is a darned sight more dreamy, but still soulful enough that she dodges the accusation of merely providing background music for dinner parties. Actually, maybe she doesn’t, but like I just said - she’s dreamy.

As opposed to Rihanna, unless you dream of S&M fantasies so fearsome that even Boy George would get the heebie jeebies. And if so, well done to you, sir!

Rihanna’s now so fierce that she should really be locked up in a zoo for public protection, which would be all well and good except that then those lousy feminists would complain about “equality” or something similar, and we all know how much they like to harp on!

Mind you, it’s probably thanks to the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst that we have Shakira writhing about in a sheer leotard while trapped in a tiny cage singing about She Wolfs and howling away, so perhaps those bra-burning types did do something good for us after all.

I once wrote that Shakira sounds like she’s been transmogrified into a hamster and bounced off a trampoline, and it’s good to hear that some things don't change. You could even put Alvin and all his Chipmunks in a blender and it would still not be nearly as satisfying.

Nominees: