The UK Country Music Spotlight Awards
Belles and Gals are delighted to introduce our new ‘UK Country Music Spotlight Awards’ this year. Ever since we began as a site, we’ve had a real focus on the UK scene, and this is our way of celebrating it. The #UKCMSA awards will be taking place at the Water Rats in London on the 23rd February. The night itself is about celebrating music, so it won’t be a formal, black tie affair, just come along as you would to any standard gig – fans will enjoy headline sets from UK stars Katy Hurt and Jake Morrell and their bands, with our own Louise Parker opening the night with a solo set. As well as the live performances, some of the biggest names in the industry will be handing out awards too! The event will be hosted by leading UK country music DJ Simon Birds!
With many guest list spaces given to nominated artists and press, the tickets will be limited – so please get in fast if you’d like to attend the event.
Tickets for the event can be purchased here –
https://www.wegottickets.com/event/495209
In all, there are nine categories in the UK section, as well as four international awards, which will be annouced in advance! Here are all of the nominations:
And here are the international nominations:
One of the questions we regularly get asked is how are the awards decided?
The team at Belles and Gals went out and asked many leading individuals around the UK country scene if they’d like to be on a panel. This included radio DJs, festival owners, website owners, management teams and members of the Belles and Gals team. One of our aims was to have a good geographical mix on the panel, with contributors from all over the UK – with the aim of ensuring that any one section of the country wasn’t overlooked. We also tried, as per our mission statement, to have a good male/female mix on the panel.
To ensure fairness and to assuage any bias, we didn’t allow anyone with a professional or family link to an artist to vote for that artist.
The panellists were simply asked to give a 1-2-3 in each category, which we used to award each selection 3, 2 and 1 points respectively. When all of the votes were in, we tallied up the totals, with the leading 4 vote winners in each category being deemed ‘nominated’. The leading vote winner in each category will win the award on the 23rd February.
