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 The two bands will be joined at the annual BRIT Awards later
on Wednesday by British acts Ellie Goulding and Bastille, but
grabbing the headlines are hotly-anticipated performances from
Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams and Bruno Mars.
Organizers are hoping performances from acts like Mars, fresh
from lighting up the halftime show at the U.S. Super Bowl
earlier this month and nominated for the BRITs' international
male award, will breathe new life into an event that failed to
impress last year.
For the first time, the audience will be global. YouTube will
stream the show live worldwide instead of solely on Britain's
commercial channel ITV, and fans will have the chance during the
evening to vote on Twitter to decide the British video award
winner.
That accolade appears to be a shoo-in for One Direction, the
five-piece band formed in 2010 on the TV singing contest The X
Factor. With 17.8 million followers on twitter, dubbed "Directioners",
the band's support dwarfs that of the other nominees.
One Direction will go head-to-head with Arctic Monkeys for the
British Group award, battling to win one of the mohawk-inspired
black and white gongs designed by milliner-to-the-stars Philip
Treacy.
Arctic Monkeys are odds-on favorites to win the coveted best
album honor for AM and will open the show in what will be their
first BRITs performance. The Sheffield-born indie quartet have
in the past appeared less than supportive of the awards, despite
multiple past wins.
Bookies expect veteran rock star David Bowie to be named best
British male solo artist. Bowie, 67, who had his first hit back
in 1969 with "Space Oddity", won the title in 1984 and is
competing against names such as Jake Bugg, 19, and Tom Odell,
who is 23.
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 Ellie Goulding, who sung at the Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge's wedding reception in 2011, is tipped for success in the
British female artist category. The "Burn" singer is also up for the
British single and video awards.
She will perform at the awards in a line-up which also includes
breakthrough-nominated pop acts Bastille and Disclosure, both
leading the field with four nominations each, and drum and bass
dance collective Rudimental.
Last year's BRIT Awards were labeled "boring" by
singer Robbie Williams, while Christian Tattersfield, current
chairman of the BRIT Awards committee, recently admitted in a
British newspaper that the 2013 event "lacked superstars".
The British pop industry will hope this year's big name acts, new
global audience and twitter-voted award will help boost record
sales.
Data from the British record industry association BPI and the
Official Charts Company show total retail-value sales of recorded
music fell 0.5 percent year-on-year to 1.04 billion pounds ($1.7
billion) in 2013.
(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by
Mark Heinrich)
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