2014 will not go down as a vintage year for the Brit Awards, but then again, very few recent award ceremonies have.
The ceremony has always had a reputation of a drink-a-thon for the music industry, while also rewarding bland-yet-commercially successful music, and giving other fodder coveted TV performance slots.
Minor quibbles are therefore magnified into Major Moments, in the absence of a genuine controversy like Jarvis Cocker mooning Michael Jackson in 1995, or unpredictable awards like Keane (somehow) beating Franz Ferdinand to Best Album in 2005.
This magnification effort helps generate coverage, which is a great way for showbiz types to maintain their spotlight long after the corporate circus has moved onto its next destination.
Perhaps this cynical outlook is the best way to describe the speech by the winners of the oh-so rock and roll "MasterCard British Album of the Year in association with the Sun's Bizarre Column" award near the end of this year's ceremony being turned into the biggest storm on Twitter - a storm that has continued relentlessly the day after the show itself.
After his band won their second Brit of the evening, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner gave a curious speech about how "rock n roll will never die" before dropping his microphone and walking off with his bandmates. This nonchalance to the point of arrogance about the whole thing was at least different to the stale commercialism that preceded it, but for some reason it seemed to anger people, such as Peaches Geldof and half of Twitter.
At the time, it was hard to know what really to think. It was a refreshingly left-field move for him not to copy everyone else with the standard acceptance speech template of thanking several dozen names and their label, but at the same time, it wasn't as hilarious as when he slagged off the Brit School while dressed as a fox-hunter (or one of Mumford & Sons) at the 2008 Brit Awards, only to be cut off by Fearne Cotton just as he seemed to have really gotten going.
While its true rock stars will say their craft will not die, and it was also true rock outsold other genres in 2013, this was not a forum friendly for rock, given his band were the only true out-and-out British rock band nominated for anything. Even then, this was on the back of an album that was possibly their least rock-inspired, in the form of the hip-hop-rock wordsmithery of AM.
Had he made his speech at next week's NME Awards, where Arctic Monkeys are up for what seems like every single award, then he might have gotten away with it. But the more establishment feel to the Brits - a scene Turner would later describe as "not my thing" at the post-show interview - meant it went down like a bit of a lead balloon at the O2 on the night.
The speech itself has divided opinion on social media. Some people thought Turner was a genius for subverting the Brits, while others thought of him as a colossal douchebag. Naturally, colossal douchebag was among the kinder adjectives used to describe Mr. Turner in the wake of his speech.
But it says a lot, sadly, that with the Brits being as bland as eating a whole packet of cream crackers to yourself with no topping, this has become the evening's big talking point.
Twitter has certainly been hard at debate. Even a day after the ceremony and with competition for David Bowie wanting Scotland to stay in the UK, the Brit Awards buzz still concerns the words of drunken wisdom or otherwise that came slowly out of Turner's mouth, and as more people decide to check the video out, it continues the buzzy feedback from going.
Not that the Brit people will be too alarmed. It keeps the ceremony in the public eye, which is handy as the TV ratings showed the 2014 ceremony as the lowest watched Brit Awards ceremony of the 21st century, with an average audience of less than 4.5million people trudging through the unholy mess of a ceremony.
Yet despite this, the viral nature of his speech has guaranteed him and the Brits publicity - something which was presumably the point as it allows further recognition for the band, who are headlining Reading and Leeds Festivals in August, and for the awards themselves, who will be back next year with (hopefully) something approaching entertainment.
Certainly at the least, it was the right kind of PR - something that wouldn't have been organised by MasterCard's inept PR agency, who spent most the day apologising to journalists they were caught offering "tweets-for-access" packages to.
Even though its still ongoing, the controversy all felt unfulfilling. While the speech occasionally touched on points of relevance and intrigue that will have borne some degree of truth, the whole saga of Turner's speech felt like a mildly surprising footnote to the event that has been made to feel like something greater than it was by willing participants on Twitter. And all this long after Turner himself has probably forgotten about it, either via hangover or moving on to his band's next tour.
If this is the best at controversy the Brit Awards have to offer, then it might as well give up pretending it can offer riotous antics now.
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