COLDPLAY and Ms Dynamite may have been the big winners at the Brit Awards yesterday, but British acts are proving to be losers with the record-buying public.

Opening the awards is an honour traditionally reserved for Britain’s hottest musical act. But when the organisers wanted a star who combined glamour with record sales this year, they chose the American singer Pink, one of a host of US acts who have annexed the British charts.

This week’s top-five albums chart is dominated by Pink and her North American cousins Justin Timberlake, Kelly Rowland and Christina Aguilera. British record buyers have fallen under the spell of a wave of American artists, from Eminem to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose streetwise sounds and “Hollywood” style leave home-grown performers looking drab and parochial.

The awards proved something of a damp squib. Robbie Williams and Eminem headed a series of winners who did not attend the ceremony at Earls Court, which is supposed to be the most important event in the musical calendar. George Michael even dueted with Ms Dynamite by videotape, although he was in London and could have performed in person.

Album sales in Britain by British artists have now fallen below 50 per cent of the total. Last year American acts took 37 per cent of the sales while British performers accounted for 47 per cent.

Missundaztood by Pink, a pop/R&B singer from Philadelphia, sold 1.26 million copies last year, second only to Robbie Williams’s Escapology, which sold 1.41 million. Eminem, Enrique Iglesias, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and even Elvis Presley all sold more than a million CDs in Britain, outperforming Oasis. Eminem sold 200,000 tickets in hours for his summer concerts at Milton Keynes.

This year’s surprise hit is Norah Jones, the New York-born daughter of the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, whose blend of jazz and pop has attracted a million buyers to her album, Come Away With Me.

America now leads the field in practically all musical genres. Missy Elliot has taken rap into new fields, with a dizzying mixture of ragga, hip-hop and garage. Her outrageous image has influenced catwalk collections. Limp Bizkit, Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters have revitalised heavy metal, swapping headbanging for sharp tunes and fashionable streetwear.

Eminem is now recognised as a brilliant lyricist with a burgeoning acting career and the US has no need for Robbie Williams when teenage fans are entranced by Timberlake, a boyband graduate who has found a new “urban” audience by working with the sharpest black R&B producers.

He and Kylie Minogue stole the show yesterday by performing a duet, the Australian wearing a Julien Macdonald black micro dress with a studded diamante collar.

While the British singles charts are clogged with personality-free, manufactured pop acts, the Americans created Avril Lavigne, an 18-year-old singer-songwriter who has married grungey teen angst with marketable pop/rock songs.

British top-sellers such as Coldplay, David Gray and Craig David are happy to let their music do the talking, while their US counterparts seize the headlines.

Coldplay, winner of the best British group and album awards, also pressed home the anti-war message, aware that the awards were being broadcast on ITV1 last night. The singer, Chris Martin, said: “We are all going to die when George Bush has his way, but it’s good to go out with a bang.” Coldplay are now established as Britain’s leading rock band, replacing Oasis.

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