"U2 is the greatest band of the last 25 years," says British magazine that needed an award to give U2

Britain’s Q Magazine—where the “Q” stands for “Quick, somebody make an arbitrary list!”—held its annual awards ceremony recognizing outstanding achievement in agreeing to show up for an awards ceremony today. Surprisingly, it still saw fit to recognize Adele with accolades for Best Female Artist and Best Track despite her bowing out due to persistent health problems, but the rest followed the typical Q tradition of recognizing artists who don’t really need it with honors that don’t really mean anything, simply because no one had anything better to do on a Monday.

Among them: Queen’s induction into the “Q Hall Of Fame,” a “Q Inspiration” award (whatever that means) for Fatboy Slim, a “Q Icon” award for Noel Gallagher (again, whatever that means and however it’s supposed to be different from “Q Inspiration”), the deigning of Take That’s Gary Barlow as a “Classic Songwriter” (whatever those words mean now, given their new context), and perhaps most indicative of Q’s tendency toward vaguely defined effusive praise, the awarding of “Best Act In The World Today” to Coldplay, presumably because they already took home the “Seriously Soooooo Awesome, You Guys” trophy last year. Coldplay’s Chris Martin, however, balked at their win, claiming that Coldplay were “about seventh” in the world, and that the best band in the world today is still U2. Still, Martin could take solace in the fact that U2 was recognized as the equally capricious “Greatest Act Of The Last 25 Years,” a title they will own until a couple of years from now, when Q forgets and gives it out again to Oasis or Muse.