Adele and Sheeran triumph at BRIT awards

Guardian News and Media/London

Adele has capped an extraordinary 12 months, kickstarted by a transformative performance at last year’s Brit awards, by returning in triumph to scoop the best British female and best British album titles.A year and a week ago, before delivering a mesmerising version of her heartbreak ballad Someone Like You at last year’s Brits which has now been seen more than 85mn times on YouTube Adele was trembling with nerves.At the same venue, the O2 in Greenwich, on Tuesday a conspicuously more confident Adele was recognised for the eyewatering commercial and critical success of 21, her second album.Her unashamed “breakup record” has sold 17mn copies. As Kylie Minogue announced Adele had won the best British female award, even cynical music executives took to their feet to give the singer a standing ovation.Adele thanked her record company, the independent label XL, for letting her “be the artiste I wanted to be”, and added a word for her fans. “No one makes me feel like you, so thank you so much.”Later she delivered a punchy performance of Rolling in the Deep, the other standout song from 21. “She’s taken over the world,” remarked the Brits host, James Corden. Winning best album - the key award of the night - Adele told the screaming audience she was “so proud to be British”. But despite taking the major honours of the evening the singer was cut off in her moment of glory and looked peeved as host Corden interrupted her to make way for Blur because the televised show was running out of time.Sales of 21 are already at 17mn and are expected to top 20mn. It is comfortably the best-selling record of the century so far, and has moved beyond the constraints of music, becoming the biggest-selling “entertainment product” of 2011, beating the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and the latest Harry Potter DVD, according to figures from the Official Charts Company.Last month Adele won six Grammys, including the top three awards, and in the US -  21 has sold 6.6mn copies and topped the charts for 20 weeks.In other ways it has been a difficult year for the singer. Last November she was forced to deny rumours that she had throat cancer, following the cancellation of her remaining 2011 tour dates, after undergoing surgery for a haemorrhaged vocal cord. Telling her fans that she had “absolutely no choice but to recuperate properly and fully, or risk damaging my voice forever”, she is set to resume touring this year, using her comeback performance at the Brits to demonstrate that she is fully recovered.Blur made their first appearance at the awards in 17 years, picking up the award for outstanding contribution to music. Damon Albarn said: “What happened that night seemed to have a profound effect on our lives, so it’s nice to come back and say thank you very much for this honour.”It was always going to be an uphill struggle for the singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran to shine with the spotlight so firmly on Adele, but he shared the honours - also winning two awards, for best British male solo act and best breakthrough act.The singer-songwriter was cheered on by hordes of Sheeranators, as his fans are known. Leading the wave of a new generation of artistes eager to prove that the right artiste can have success without the backing of a major record label, Sheeran has been releasing his own records since 2005 and was finally signed to Atlantic records after an EP of collaborations with grime artistes eventually made it to No 2 in the iTunes charts.Sheeran’s use of YouTube and social networking have helped him sell more than 1mn copies of his album, +.Best British single voted for by the public was won by One Direction, for their poppy hit What Makes You Beautiful (choice lyric: “Being the way you are is e-nu-nu-uff”), to the delight of speed-dialing teenyboppers throughout the UK.An unusually overdressed Rihanna took home the best international female award. The singer-songwriter Bruno Mars whose hit, Just the Way You Are, was one of the anthems of the past year was named best international male solo artiste. Ethan Johns who has worked with Kings of Leon, Crowded House, Laura Marling and Crosby, Stills and Nash took home the award for best British producer, while Emeli Sand, a former medical student from Scotland whose first single went to No 2, won the critics’ choice award.Lana Del Ray was named international breakthrough act, a nod to the huge success of her single Video Games.