The HYG New Year Honours List

2007, believe it or not, wasn’t entirely terrible. In amongst the not-unfounded doom and gloom stood a few glimmers of hope - beacons shining hard against the slew of distinctly average boredom-inducers we faced on a daily basis.

These awards honour those beacons, all of whom continue to fight the good fight against mediocrity (by being mind-bogglingly amazing, or, in some cases, preposterously bad) and therefore deserve our thanks, recognition and sex.

Women Of The Year
The Real Heat. Foul-mouthed, filthy and fucking brilliant, sisters Suki, Shaka and Zaza impressed not only with their shit-hot tunes but also with effortless confidence, charisma, style and humour. Role models like these don’t come along too often.

Man Of The Year
Timbaland. His editing skills might leave a lot to be desired (‘Shock Value’ clocks in at four minutes longer than the audio book of the Bible) but his production abilities far outweigh a tendency to overdo things. This award celebrates Timbo’s two years atop the superproducer pile, a tenure that has birthed solid gold classics like SexyBack, Maneater, The Way I Are and countless other mini-masterpieces. Well done that man.

Band Of The Year
Klaxons. Brilliant album, fantastic live shows, perfect aesthetic: Klaxons are a band apart, on a quest to bring us their own unique vision of… well, we’re not quite sure, but whatever it is, it’s bloody exciting. Take note, denim-wearing nonentities of the indie variety.

Club Of The Year
Winner: Clique, Manchester
Honourable Mentions: Keys Money Lipstick, Get Girl. Kill Baddies. Save Planet., Contort Yourself, Sex With Robots (all Manchester).

Comeback Of The Year
Britney Spears. In ‘celebrity’ terms she never went away, but musically, ol’ Britters had become about as relevant as any of the 79461 news stories printed about her private life were. What better way to remedy this than by making the album of her career, drafting in a string of top producers to come up with storming nowpop bangers like ‘Toy Soldier’ and ‘Piece Of Me‘? None, obviously. Least of all child abduction.

Haircut(s) Of The Year
Foals. Full marks for effort, chaps.

Best Use Of An Umbrella In Pop
Winner: Britney Spears
Runner-up: Rihanna

Best Lyrical Dodge Of The Year
“I’ve been oversubscribed with relationships”
- Calvin Harris gets euphemistic about being a slut.

The Year’s Best Gigs
1. Klaxons
2. Human League
3. Hadouken!
4. The Long Blondes
5000000. The Thrills

The ABOUT FUCKING TIME Award For Chart Recognition
Robyn

Trend We’d Most Like To See The Back Of
HUGE SCARY FALSE EYELASHES (Sugababes, Girls Aloud). Arghh!

Least Called-for Revival
Baggy, as brought to us by Brummie bores The Twang.

Most Convincing Argument For The Closure Of The Record Industry
Winners: Scouting For Girls / Pigeon Detectives
Runners-up: The Twang

Lifetime Achievement For Services To Mediocrity
Razorlight

Best Pop Telly Of The Year
Winner: The Simon Cowell episode of Star Stories
Runner-up: The bit where you text in your name to the music channel and they show a load of sex positions at the bottom of screen that you can attempt LOLLOLOLOL!!!!!!! :S

Blog Of The Year
‘Your very own’ hip young gunslinger, of course.

Website Of The Year
Popjustice

Film Of The Year
TRANSFORMERS!!!!!!1!!

Month Of The Year
February

Date Of The Year
14th July

Food Of The Year
Wagamama’s armadillo-shaped rice thing (NB. not actual name).

How Did Lil’ Chris Do This Year?
Christopher ‘Christ’ Hardman started the year fresh in everyone’s minds as the cheeky young chap responsible for a brilliant (although no one thought so) album full of glistening powerpop nuggets. Then came silence.

A few months later, Hardman released the entirely listenable ‘Clothes Off’, only to see his single’s thunder stolen by some godawful American types, and it limp into the charts in the mid-70s. Crestfallen, Chris made a charming appearance on Celebrity Scissorhands, which saw various celebs having large blades grafted onto their arms, in the style of the Johnny Depp vehicle of similar name. Chris was last seen being interviewed on ‘Nuts TV’ :(

Mystic Vic Predicts…
Hadouken! to buckle under the pressure of being a bit different and release a rock album with some keyboards stapled on, having studied one too many Tom Morello ‘licks’.

Top Tips For 2008
Last year we plumped for Mark Ronson and Jamie T. Can’t win ‘em all.

This year, we are ‘getting behind’ The Ting Tings, who will undoubtedly take their blissful art pop on to bigger and better things (if ‘That’s Not My Name’ isn’t subject to a massive re-release at some point, we will… be wrong about that); Foals, who are obviously going to be huge this summer (even with a Hummer-less album) and Adele, but really we’re just copying everyone else with that one ‘cos we’ve only heard the one about pavements.

Anyway. Other things we would quite like to see go massive this year include: Daggers, The Clik Clik, The Tigerpicks, Modernaire, Elle S’appelle, The Real Heat, Dragonette (finally), Frankmusic, Rye Rye and our bank balance.