BRIT Award Nominees

I totally forgot to talk about the BRIT Award nominees over the weekend. They are out!

Best British Album:

Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Duffy - Rockferry
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Radiohead - In Rainbows
The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing

Isn't interesting how the criteria for the BRIT album and single awards are clearly quite different? While the singles list has a heavy sales component (almost exclusively it seems), the albums list takes a more qualitative approach. Hence Mercury-nominated Seldom Seen Kid elbows its way (he he) onto this list, as does Grammy nominee In Rainbows, along with Britain's best-selling album of 2008, Duffy's Rockferry, the top contender. However, don't count out Coldplay, who are also nominated for a best album Grammy (for the first time), and have won this BRIT award for every one of their previous three albums. How interesting would it be that the first time Coldplay doesn't win the BRIT they instead win the Grammy? The Ting Tings are happy just to be nominated. Take That were not nominated for Circus, but perhaps they will be next year (Beautiful World was nominated the year after it was released).

Best international album:

AC/DC - Black Ice
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Killers - Day & Age
Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

This is a real mix of the super popular (Kings of Leon, The Killers) and the indie (Fleet Foxes, MGMT), all American this time, and all bands (No Pink or Ne-Yo). I suppose Kings of Leon is the obvious frontrunner, with MGMT the dark horse. (Addendum: As John points out, AC/DC is Australian, so this is like last year then, 4 Yanks and an Aussie--last year it was Kylie).

Best British single:

Adele - Chasing Pavements
Alexandra Burke - Hallelujah
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris - Dance Wiv Me
Duffy - Mercy
Estelle featuring Kanye West - American Boy
Girls Aloud - The Promise
Leona Lewis - Better In Time
Scouting For Girls - Heartbeat
The X Factor Finalists - Hero

I love that this category generally has 10 nominees. It's pretty easy to predict: look at the list of the best-selling singles in the UK for the year. Start down the list and keep track of all the British acts, then switch up a couple. So we get Leona's "Better in Time" instead of her bigger hit "Run," and Scouting for Girls' "Heartbeat" instead of The Ting Ting's "That's Not My Name" (even though Ting Tings got an album nod...odd). "Mercy" seems the obvious frontrunner, but I wouldn't count out "American Boy."