Meteor Irish Music Awards: Nominees Announced

Just before Christmas I wrote about the upcoming Meteor Music Awards and the announcement of a brand new, publicly voted, award category: 'Most Promising New Artist'. Today I had the pleasure of attending the launch of the Awards in Dublin's Balzac Restaurant at the La Stampa Hotel on Dawson Street.

The big news today was the announcement of this year’s nominees and live performances. Hosted this year by Amanda Byram, the Awards promise a truely star-studded event to celebrate the tenth year of Meteors sponsorship of the Awards. Guest performers on the night will include; Westlife, Snow Patrol, The Script, Florence and the Machine, Paolo Nutini, The Coronas and Pixie Lott, to mention just a few. There will also be a host of additional performers announced during the coming weeks.

The nominees for the publicly voted categories are as follows:

Best National D.J. Ian Dempsey, Today FM Damien Farrelly, 2fm Tony Fenton, Today FM Ray Foley, Today FM Larry Gogan, 2fm Dan Hegarty, 2fm	Best Regional D.J. Leigh Doyle, Beat 102-103 Jim & Niamh, FM 104 KC & Lenny, Red fm Michelle McMahon, Spin Southwest Jon Richards, Galway Bay fm Shona Ryan, Spin 103.8
Best Irish Band Bell X1 The Coronas Delorentos Snow Patrol U2	Best Irish Male Colin Devlin Jerry Fish Jack L Christy Moore Mundy
Best Irish Female Wallis Bird Julie Feeney Valerie Francis Laura Izibor Dolores O'Riordan	Best Irish Pop Act The Blizzards Delorentos Laura Izibor The Script Westlife
Best Irish Album Bell X1 - Blue Lights on the Runaway The Coronas - Tony was an Ex-Con The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method Snow Patrol - Up to Now U2 - No Line on the Horizon
Best Irish Live Performance Bell X1 Christy Moore The Script Snow Patrol U2

And finally, The Most Promising New Artist for 2010. Of course I can't list the nominations here as it's up to you folk to make it happen. Some great news I can give you here, however, is that the entry deadline has been extended to the 15th January. So there's loads of extra time to get your videos up on the interweb! The remaining 9 awards will be decided by representatives of the Irish music industry.

All the category links above will bring you directly to the Meteor website, and as public voting went live from today, you should click over (as soon as you've finished reading) and get your votes in. Votes can also be cast directly from your mobile phone and all details on how to do this may be found on the Meteor website.

The event itself will air on RTE 2 on Sunday 21st February 2010 at 9pm.