Ed Sheeran strikes high note in Brit award nominations Acoustic guitarist and songwriter Ed Sheeran, performing last November in London. Photograph: Hayley Madden/Redferns Ed Sheeran boasted "My shit's cool ... I didn't go to Brit School" on his inescapable hit You Need Me, I Don't Need You. But the music industry body clearly has not borne a grudge; the 20-year-old singer-songwriter-cum-rapper has been nominated for four Brit awards. In a list dominated by singer-songwriters, Sheeran is in the running for best British male solo artist, British breakthrough act, British single and British album of the year. Coldplay are the only band to score more than one nomination, for best British group and British album of the year. Sheeran's relentless gigging and smart use of YouTube and social networking has helped him towards 900,000 album sales in under four months. He has been self-releasing records since 2005, eventually making No 2 on the iTunes chart in January last year with an EP of collaborations with grime artists, before being signed to Atlantic records. He was the main target of a Guardian Guide article in October on "the new boring," which warned that "a new wave of beige pop" was flooding the charts and described his album Plus as "a 12-bore shitgun (13 if you count the bonus track) ." However, Paul Rees, editor of Q magazine, says Sheeran's fans are fervent. We did a gig with Ed Sheeran earlier in the year and the response was hysterical - people were literally hanging off the balconies. He's a typical Marmite artist; he divides opinion, but he's got a very young, incredibly enthusiastic, audience. Perhaps surprisingly, Sheeran has received one more nomination than Adele, now the world's most commercially successful pop star. Her album 21 was the biggest seller of 2011 on both sides of the Atlantic, shifting 3.8m copies in the UK alone, partly thanks to a showstopping performance of Someone Like You at last year's Brits, which has now been viewed almost 85m times on YouTube. The singer has been nominated for best British female solo artist, British single and British album of year. Adele's appeal has even outgrown the music business: on Tuesday the Official Charts Company announced that 21 was the UK's biggest-selling entertainment product of 2011, beating the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3,and the latest Harry Potter DVD. Jessie J also receives three nominations: British female, British breakthrough act and British single. She won the "critics' choice" award at last year's Brits, an award which tips a new act for stardom, and which was previously won by Adele. This year's winner will be Emeli Sandé, a former medical student from Scotland whose first single went to No 2, and who has also been nominated for British breakthrough act. The Observer's music critic, Kitty Empire, declared last month that Sandé "seems to have the new year all sewn up before it has even begun." Pickings are slimmer for the critical darlings of 2011. PJ Harvey, whose album Let England Shake won the Mercury prize and was acclaimed as the best of the year by nearly every music publication going, is up for British album of the year, the eighth nomination of her career. Kate Bush, who last won a Brit in 1987 and spent 2011 in an uncharacteristic flurry of activity, releasing two albums, receives her seventh nomination, for best British female. The critically acclaimed Lana Del Rey has been nominated for a best international breakthrough act award, despite having only officially released one single, Video Games. She is competing with Bon Iver, whose first, hugely acclaimed album came out four years ago. The many pop stars spawned by Simon Cowell's television shows have, as usual, been comprehensively ignored, apart from in the British single category, based on commercial radio airplay and sales and voted for by the public. Rees said the awards were an accurate indication of the state of mainstream music. There's nothing like the Oasis/Blur years - no sense of a great musical movement happening. The lack of bands is pretty indicative of where we are. It does feel like one of those periods where something exciting needs to happen. Skrillex is interesting because he's loud and annoys people. We need a yang to the yin. Skrillex, who combines dubstep with nu-metal, was not nominated. The ceremony, which takes place at the O2 arena on 21 February, will include performances from Adele, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Sheeran, Florence and the Machine, Noel Gallagher and Rihanna. Blur, who are receiving the award for outstanding contribution to music, will close the show in their first public performance since 2009. They are rumoured to be making an album to be released this year.