The Brits at 40: The very best moments in the awards show's history

The Brit Awards are gearing up to celebrate a milestone birthday.

Tonight, the annual awards ceremony will officially turn 40 - and in those four decades, the Brits have given us some of the most memorable moments in British music history.

Though the awards were actually first held in 1977 to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, they didn’t become a yearly event until 1982.

Since then, the Brits have been responsible for plenty of era-defining moments.

The '90s were a particularly wild ride for the awards, with Oasis and Blur’s feud playing out on stage when the Gallaghers lorded their 1996 Best Album win over their rivals by breaking into an expletive-ridden parody of Parklife.

Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker was another Britpop star to spark controversy at the Brits, famously jumping on stage during Michael Jackson’s performance of Earth Song and pulling down his trousers in protest at what he later described as the musician’s “Jesus act.”

Girl power caused a stir, too - perhaps the definitive photo of the Spice Girls is from their performance of Wannabe at the 1997 Brit Awards, with Geri Halliwell wearing that Union Jack mini dress.

The group made their final Brits appearance - this time as a four-piece - in 2000. Halliwell memorably performed her solo track Bag It Up on the same night - and refused to accept the Spice Girls’ Outstanding Contribution to Music award alongside her bandmates.

The first decade of the new millennium saw an impressive line-up of international stars - from Destiny’s Child to Pink to Justin Timberlake - make their debut on the Brits stage.

For better or worse, the industry bash has always acted as a barometer for mainstream pop culture. That means that for every genre-bending collaboration (remember the year of Rihanna and Klaxons? Or Dizzee Rascal and Florence Welch?) there’s been a correspondingly bizarre misfire (case in point: who allowed James Corden and Mathew Horne to host in 2009?).

Though the ceremonies have been comparatively sedate in recent years, the live broadcast means there’s always room for slip-ups - as Madonna found out in 2015 when she took a tumble during her performance, thanks to a rogue cape.

Kanye West hit the headlines that same year when he debuted the track All Day. Joined on stage by UK grime stars like Stormzy, Skepta, Krept & Konan and Novelist, ITV decided to mute the audio for most of the broadcast due to West’s use of expletives.

And in 2018, Stormzy proved that the Brits could be a platform for political protest, when he used his performance to slam then-Prime Minister Theresa May for the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower file in a devastating freestyle rap, asking: “Theresa May, where’s the money for Grenfell?

With performances from Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Lizzo and Dave, the 40th Brit Awards looks like it’ll be one for the history books, too.

Look back on four decades of the Brit Awards in the gallery above...