Girl Power Dominates At Ivor Novello Awards.

This month has played host to a number of releases from female-fronted bands Beach House, Best Coast, and Niki and the Dove, and the reign of girl power looks set to continue after a stream of female successes at the Ivor Novello Awards this afternoon.

The award, in its 57th year, was held at Grosvenor House Hotel in central London. This year is the first in the history of the event that all nominees for ‘Best Album’ were women.

Adele won the much-coveted ‘Best Songwriter’ prize for ‘Rolling in the Deep’, despite telling the audience that when she wrote it she ‘really didn’t think it was going to do anything!’. Adele also scooped ‘Most Performed Song’ - a category in which she had two out of the three nominations.

PJ Harvey beat off stiff competition to win the prestigious ‘Best Album’ award for ‘Let England Shake’, beating Adele’s ‘21’. Having also beaten Adele at the Mercury Prize last year, it was not the first time the singer pipped Adele to the post.

Lana Del Ray, who is currently at the Cannes Film Festival, won ‘Best Contemporary Song’ for ‘Video Games’, while punk front-woman Siouxsie Sioux bagged ‘Ivors Inspiration Award’

Other winners included Ed Sheeran who beat both Florence And The Machine and Adele to win the hotly contested prize for ‘Best Song Musically and Lyrically’. ‘Outstanding Song Collection’ went to Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, while Take That picked up an Outstanding Contribution to Music award. Dire Straits’ guitarist and solo singer Mark Knopfler was honoured with a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and ‘Best Original Film Score’ went to The First Grader.

Last year the Ivor Novello Awards were dominated by Plan B, who won 3 awards.