LONDON – Katy Perry and Arctic Monkeys will perform at the 2014 Brit Awards, the British music industry’s top awards event.
Arctic Monkeys will open the televised show with a live set. The Sheffield group is an early signing for the February show bill alongside U.S. pop star Perry.
The Brit Awards, which air on ITV, also will see the return of host James Corden, the Tony Award-winning actor turned presenter and writer. He will perform the MC duties for the fifth and final time, organizers said.
During the early days of the awards ceremony, it used to see pranks, swearing and onstage spats between acts before it was cleaned up by organizers who called for more buttoned-down behavior.
Arctic Monkeys have not had a good relationship with the Brit Awards in the past. The band refused to attend the 2006 Brits, when it won the breakthrough act award. In 2007, the band sent a mocking video message as members dressed up as characters from The Wizard of Oz.
When the band did accept an award in person in 2008, its members dressed as country squires and delivered a sarcastic acceptance speech, which organizers decided to drown out for TV viewers.
According to media reports, the band’s decision finally to make peace with the Brit Awards reflects the group’s acceptance that they have become one of the U.K.’s preeminent rock bands following a Glastonbury Festival headline performance earlier this year.
The chance to play live before a potential audience of 10 million ITV viewers also was too good to refuse, noted a report in The Independent.
Perry said: “It’s an honor to play at such a prestigious event where musicality shines at its brightest.”
Christian Tattersfield, the Brit Awards chairman who also is Warner Music U.K. co-CEO and co-chairman, said the aim was to “pull out all the stops” to make the 2014 Brits the most exciting ever.
Tattersfield said it took a “lot of wining and dining on behalf of the Brits” to get theArctic Monkeys to agree to rock the show.
The band’s fifth studio album, AM, hit number one on the U.K. charts on its release, mirroring the top spot debuts of their previous four albums.
Arctic Moneys are the 24th group to have five number one albums in Britain, but only the fifth to do so with their first five albums, following The Beatles, Oasis, Coldplay and Keane.
This year’s Brits boasted myriad U.S. stars, including performances by Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake, and winners’ stage visits by Frank Ocean and Lana Del Rey.
