The BRIT Awards 2013: The biggest selling nominees revealed

Imagine if The BRIT Awards 2013 were decided purely on record sales... OfficialCharts.com reveals who would be most likely to bag a trophy (or two) tonight.

The BRIT Awards 2013 are set to take place later this evening at London’s O2 Arena, and will be broadcast live on ITV 1. A total of 52 artists will be vying for awards in 11 categories, with the winners being decided by the music industry experts from the 1,000-strong BRITs Voting Academy, as well as votes from you guys, the fans.

However, 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 sailing home tonight on the Thames Clipper with one of those rather fetching Damien Hirst-designed spotty statuettes in their handbag/man bag?

British Female / Album Of The Year

What a remarkable year it has been for 2012’s BRITs Critics’ Choice winner Emeli Sande, and this time around, Emeli has no less than four nominations in three different categories.  So with million-selling debut album Our Version Of Events becoming the biggest selling album of 2012, plus two Official Number 1 singles now under her belt, if this was a sales-based race, Emeli would easily be walking away with awards for British Female and Album Of The Year, having sold an incredible 3,087,000 singles and albums combined, since last year’s BRITs.

British Single

Despite Emeli Sande’s two nominations in the British Single category (for Next To Me and Beneath Your Beautiful with Labrinth), the Scottish singer/songwriter would be pipped by 2012 X Factor winner James Arthur’s Impossible, if the winners were crowned purely on sales. Impossible, sold a staggering 1.08 million between December and January alone (1.13 million to date). 

International Female

Rihanna would take home the International Female Award for the third year in a row thanks to her UK fans snapping up a whopping 3,868,000 copies of her singles and albums in the past year.

British Group

Home-grown global superstars One Direction would take home the award for British Group, thanks to enormous combined sales of 2.43 million singles and albums here in the UK.

British Male

When questioned by The Sun earlier this week about his BRITs nomination for the Briitsh Male Award, in glorious Sheffield style, Richard Hawley predicted that he has “as much chance of winning as I have of seeing the Queen’s t*ts.”

Unfortunately, the 46 year old singer/songwriter might have tempted fate, if this were judged by sales alone, of course.  In a category accompanied by Ben Howard, Calvin Harris and Plan B, Hawley may not be the biggest selling of his competition, but he is no stranger to critical acclaim, having being twice nominated for the Mercury Prize in both 2006 (Coles Corner) and 2012 (Standing At The Sky’s Edge).

With the spotlight on the shop tills alone though, the gong for BRITs British Male Award would instead be going to cheeky Essex chappy Olly Murs after racking up sales of 2,108,000 million in the last year.  December 2012 saw Olly Murs score his first chart double, as latest album Right Place Right Time hit the top spot on the Official Albums Chart at the same time the Xtra Factor presenter also brought home his fourth Official UK Number 1 single with Troublemaker FT Flo Rida.

British Live Act

With Coldplay, Mumford And Sons, Muse, The Rolling Stones and The Vaccines set to battle it out for the British Live Act award, for one night only if you swapped ticket sales for record sales, it would be Coldplay who come out on top with combined record sales of 1,715,000 since the last BRIT Awards.

International Group

Fun., whose track We Are Young FT Janelle Monae last month tipped over the one million sales threshold in the UK, would take the International Group award with combined sales of 1.69 million.

International Male

And finally, Gotye would comfortably triumph over Bruce Springsteen, Frank Ocean, Jack White and Michael Buble in the International Male category with combined sales 1,556,000.

Though he wasn’t nominated in the International Male category, Flo Rida could have cleaned up based on his sales success! The US rapper did receive a nomination for appearing on the British Single-nominated Troublemaker alongside Olly Murs, however, with a current musical CV containing THREE of 2012’s Biggest Selling Singles (Wild Ones, Troublemaker, Whistle) and combined single and album sales of 2.13 million, Flo Rida was unlucky to miss out on a nomination for International Male.

The Top 20 Official Biggest Selling BRIT Awards 2013 Nominees are as follows:

© 2013 The Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.

OfficialCharts.com have tallied up total combined singles and albums sales of each BRIT-nominated artist from February 2012 through to end of January 2013.