BRITS 2012 winners – we pick our winners for the BRIT Awards 2012

Here we go again! Last year we ran a post picking our winners for the BRIT Awards, but it fell on deaf ears with the voting panel as they seemingly preferred to pick the winners for each award out of a hat!

Nevertheless, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t give our opinion on the biggest UK music awards of the year, regardless of how crap most of the nominees are! So here’s who we think will win each award this year – join in the discussion in the comments below and let us know who you think should be walking away with an award next month (check out our previous post for a full list of BRITS 2012 nominees).

British Male Solo Artist

Out of the list of nominees, there are only two that jump out as potential winners – Ed Sheeran and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Obviously the ginger troubadour will win it, seeing as he’s had the fastest selling debut album since whenever and teenage girls are much more likely to have his posters on their walls than Noel’s. Discounting all that though, we’d give it to Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – mostly due to the fact he’s managed to get such a ridiculous name into the ‘Solo Artist’ category!

British Female Solo Artist

We know that everyone just reading the words ‘best British female solo artist’ will instantly picture Adele, probably seeing her belting out a huge chorus about getting dumped with a tear running down her cheek. But just because she sells truck-loads of albums doesn’t necessarily mean she’s the ‘best’. Or does it? We don’t really know how the BRITS pick the winners to be honest, but we would put our house on Adele claiming this prize. In our humble opinion it should go to Florence & The Machine, for the brilliant second album Ceremonials.

British Breakthrough Act

Again, Ed Sheeran is all over this like best mate Ron Weasley rummaging through Hermoine’s knicker drawer, but we think The Vaccines should win for being the only notable guitar band to ‘breakthrough’ in the past year.

British Group

This award is usually the high-point of the BRIT Awards, but this year the category is a bit underwhelming. It’s probably a symptom of this ‘dearth of good bands’ issue we keep reading about though, so we can’t really blame the BRITS for it – although that’s no excuse for nominating Chase and bloody Status! For us it’s between Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian, so we’ll judge it on the better album of last year – which was Suck It And See. Congratulations Arctic Monkeys!

British Single

With a lack of any real credible options in this category we’ll just go with the single that we’ve sung along to more often over the past few months – which is ‘Changed The Way You Kissed Me’ by Example. Moving on…

MasterCard British Album of the Year

Obviously the ‘big one’, seeing as a credit card company has gone to the trouble of sponsoring it – we can’t see the BRITS panel making any surprises so for them it’ll be between Adele and Ed Sheeran. Our pick would be the Mercury Prize winning and official ‘All-Noise second best album of 2011’ Let England Shake by PJ Harvey.

International Male Solo Artist

Oh God this is grim! Who to pick out of Aloe Blacc, Bon Iver, Bruno Mars, David Guetta and Ryan Adams. It’s like having to pick between beige, and a different kind of beige! We’ll narrow it down to Bon Iver and Ryan Adams, obviously, and then (flips a coin) give it to Ryan Adams. Well deserved!

International Female Solo Artist

As always, token ‘alternative’ nominee Bjork finds herself in this category. And as always she stands no chance of winning. Thanks to her relatively well-received headline slot at Glastonbury, we think Beyonce deserves this one – because who doesn’t like Beyonce!?

International Group

Not the best of categories this one, so we’ll just quickly say we’d give it to The Throne, or Jay-Z and Kanye West, because we liked their album Watch The Throne more than any of the others. Simple!

International Breakthrough Act

This may probably be the only award where us and the BRITS panel agree on something. No-one has ‘broken through’ quite like Lana Del Rey this past year – and we couldn’t give it to anyone else after we gave Born To Die such a good review, could we!?

Outstanding Contribution to Music

This one’s already decided, and we can’t think of a more worthy winner than Blur. We do wonder how they pick these winners though. Do they just have a long list of quite old bands that they work their way through? And how do you define the level of a bands contribution over other bands? Before we go off on one, lets just leave it there and look forward to an awesome ending to the show.

Critics Choice

Again, it’s already decided – with everyone’s ‘hot tip’ Emeli Sande walking away with the award, beating Maverick Sabre and Michael Kiwanuka.

British Producer

Were getting a bit bored now, to be honest, so lets just give this to Paul Epworth for his work on Florence’s Ceremonials.

Who do you think will triumph at this years BRIT Awards? Let us know in the comments below….