The BRIT Awards 2014: The biggest selling nominees revealed

Imagine if The BRIT Awards 2014 were decided purely on record sales... We’ve been crunching all the numbers and can now reveal who would be most likely to take home a statuette tonight.

Tonight’s the night! The BRIT Awards 2014 take place this evening at London’s O2 Arena, and will be broadcast live on ITV. Those popstars lucky enough to be taking home an award will have been chosen by music industry experts from the 1,000-strong BRITs Voting Academy, as well as votes from the fans (that's you).

But… if tonight’s winners were determined by who had sold the most singles and albums since last year’s BRIT Awards, which artists would be clearing a space in their trophy cabinet for this year’s Philip Treacy-designed, punk-inspired statuette?

British Single

Ellie Goulding notches up two nominations in this category, with Burn and her Calvin Harris collabo I Need Your Love. But she has to make way for Michael Rosenberg, or, as we prefer to call him, Passenger, whose Number 2 hit Let Her Go has sold over a million copies. If it were all about the sales of each single nominated, Passenger would be going home with a little something sparkly. But if we start to get a little tricksier and combine singles and albums sales, is the result the same? Actually, it isnt. Fellow nominees One Direction have the largest combined sales in this category, and also this next one…

British Group

Thanks to strong sales and a Number 1 with One Way Or Another/Teenage Kicks, One Direction score a combined sales tally of 3.19 million, meaning they reign supreme in the British Group category. Will Harry, Liam, Zayn, Niall, and Louis get another BRIT to keep last year’s Global Success Award company?

British Album

Five big albums, but there can be only one winner. Who’ll be taking the award home tonight nobody knows, but if this were a sales-based competition, Arctic Monkeys would be popping open the champagne. Their latest album AM has sold over 560,000 copies in the last year, more than all the other albums nominated.

What happens when we start to combine singles AND album sales? Well things get really interesting… If we put all the sales together, it’s not Arctic Monkeys who get to lift the trophy. Newcomers Bastille, with a sales tally of over 2,077,000, sneak out in front. Which leads us on to…

British Breakthrough Act

All five nominees have had a fantastic year starting out in their pop careers, but when it comes to shifting records, it’s Londoners Bastille who’ve managed to score highest. With two Number 2 singles (Pompeii and Of The Night) and a Number 1 album Bad Blood, Bastille storm ahead in this category too. But it ain’t over until the award has been announced…

British Female Solo

A tough category this year, with the main battle seeing previous Critics’ Choice winners Jessie J and Ellie Goulding go head-to-head. Jessie’s had a great year, with two Top 10 singles and a Top 5 album, but thanks to Ellie scoring the first Number 1 of her career (and bona fide mega hit) in the summer with Burn, it’s Miss Goulding who takes the crown.

Her UK singles sales alone since the last BRIT Awards top a tidy two million, including her collaboration with Calvin Harris, and she’s shifted over 640,000 albums to boot, including chart-topping album Halcyon. Nice work, Gould Diggers!

British Male Solo

There is some serious locking of horns going on between some very successful stags in the British Male category. David Bowie pulled off a massive comeback, of course, and John Newman enjoyed a huge Number 1 with Love Me Again, plus Jake Bugg has had a great year too.

Thanks to those bumper singles sales, however, it would be John Newman taking this one home tonight if it were judged solely on what nominees had sold since the last BRIT Awards. His combined sales tally, taking album Tribute and his singles on vocals with Rudimental into account, is over 1.3 million.

International Male

There was no stopping Slim Shady in 2013, and despite releasing his album later in the year than Justin Timberlake, Eminem definitely delivered the goods, with the British public snapping up a cool 477,000 copies of the long-awaited Marshall Mathers LP2, and not to forget that little ditty he put out with Rihanna – The Monster – which is still in the Official Singles Chart Top 40 some four months later, having sold well over half a million copies.

International Female

Katy Perry and Lady Gaga have both had very high-profile campaigns, and Lorde made quite an impression with breakthrough debut single Royals, not to mention Pink who sold stealthily, and steadily with some big singles. But it’s Katy Perry who would be crowned champion of the BRITs 2014 jungle thanks to huge Number 1 Roar swinging in at over 890,000 copies. Katy’s combined total stands at 1.76 million.

International Group

2013 was a huge year for Daft Punk, with a million-seller in Get Lucky and a Number 1 album with Random Access Memories, and based on sales alone, the world’s most exclusive robots should probably be clearing space on their mantelpiece for this category. Despite Macklemore & Ryan Lewis snapping at their heels, the Gallic duo’s combined sales total of over 2.1 million put them out in front.

So that’s your stats, but who are you backing to bag a BRIT Award tonight?