Brit Award Nominees

Best British Single

• Alexandra Burke ft Pitbull - All Night Long
• Cheryl Cole - Parachute
• Florence & The Machine - You’ve Got The Love
• Matt Cardle - When We Collide
• Olly Murs - Please Don’t Let Me Go
• Plan B - She Said
• Scouting For Girls - This Ain’t A Love Song
• Taio Cruz - Dynamite
• Tinie Tempah - Pass Out
• The Wanted - All Time Low

The Best British single category is generally heavily influenced by sales. Just run down the list of the year's biggest hits, identifying the ones by British artists, and you'll have your nominees. At least that's how it seems to work. When it varies, it's strange. You'd think Ellie Goulding's "Your Song," the 21st biggest hit of the year, would have been a shoo-in, especially considering that she's up for British female and British breakthrough, but neither that nor her album were nominated. Also shocking is the exclusion of Take That's "The Flood," a major year-end hit that was huge at radio and responsible for propelling its parent album to be the year's biggest selling long-player. I'm not surprised to see Scouting for Girls' "This Ain't a Love Song," as it was either that or "Kickstarts" for the 9th spot in my prediction (good call that I picked "You've Got the Love" over "You've Got the Dirtee Love"). I'm more surprised to see Cheryl Cole's "Parachute" and Alexandra Burke's "All Night Long" selected over those artists' #1 hits, although these are actually the better songs.

Mastercard British Album

• Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
• Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks
• Take That - Progress
• Tinie Tempah Disc - Overy
• The XX - XX

What exactly is a "Mastercard Brit?" Is it someone in Britain who walks around with a magnetic stripe on their back? In any event, the albums list has Plan B, Take That, and Tinie Tempah as I suspected. I'm glad to see The XX, but I wouldn't have thought they would qualify, since their album is from 2009. Same goes for Mumford & Sons. It's a hard choice whether I'd back XX or Take That for this. Both are excellent. It would be nice to see Take That win, since they've never won the album category.

International Album

• Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
• Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer
• Eminem - Recovery
• Katy Perry - Teenage Dream
• Kings Of Leon - Come Around Sundown

With the exception of Cee Lo, this is pretty much what I expected. Would have been nice to see Rihanna's Loud in the mix, since it's a better pop album than Katy Perry's.