Best New Artist
Reckoner
Reckoner have proven themselves to be one of the best breakthrough artists, energetic live performances which don't include crazy stunts like fireworks or burning band members but simple yet groundbreaking musical performances, musically dedicated and gifted members(like JC who could play the trombone, piano, electric guitar, violin, cello, drums, glockenspiel, and even the harmonica) a strong debut album "Ïnvisible" which has received much critical praise from both the media and people inside the music industry, sold more than 1M copies and has stayed on the charts for over 10 weeks(ingame), and most of all, they are the kind of band who give their fans good clean music and don't care about the money, just the joy they give to others..
Best Music Video
Negative by Reckoner
Summary:The music video begins with a group of young men who go into a store to shoplift. The owner of the store(Jason Smith) gets suspicious and calls the police. After a chase, one of the boys was caught and was revealed to be the son of a well known local policeman so he spent the night at jail. Flashbacks run throughout the video as the young man begins writing a message on a piece of paper. It is revealed that the boy has been jailed numerous times with his gang because of different cases like vandalism, robbery, and beating up a school teacher, but it is also revealed that he is innocent and never directly committed those crimes but is only hanging out with the gang at those times thus being involved. The day he was released, the gang met up with him and tell him of their new business dealing drugs and that they were going to buy supplies that night. He spent hours thinking about what he has done in his life and finally made up his mind about turning the gang in. That night, he called through a phonebooth informing his dad about the drug dealing and apologized for all the things he has done wrong and told him how much he loved him before hanging up, he then puts the piece of paper he was writing on earlier in the video in his pocket and runs off with his friends. The drug dealers(Shadow Of My Former Self) then meet up with the guys at an abandoned warehouse and just as they are about to exchange briefcases, the police arrive. The drug dealers draw out their guns and begin shooting at the police, the police then return fire. The young man runs away from the drug dealers but is shot at the chest and lies on the floor with blood flowing out of his body. Just as the drug dealers escape, the father of the young man begins to cry as he kneels before his son's critically wounded body and before the son dies, he brings out the piece of paper and gives it a kiss before giving it to his father who cries even louder(the message in the paper was never revealed to the camera). Just as the son dies, he wakes up on the floor and sees the band surrounding him, Troy then reaches his hand out to the young man and they walk away into a bright light, the young man gets one last glimpse of his father before leaving to the other side with the band. The band have faced controversy with this video because of its association to violence regarding children and drug abuse, though the band did their best to stand up for their video. The result was the banning of the video in the US and Reckoner's refusal to release the single in the US..
