This week the shortlist for this year's famed (in England anyway) Mercury Music Prize was announced. Traditionally, the award goes to the supposed 'best British album' of the previous year. However, this is rarely the case. Indeed what the award really sets out to achieve is to break some new and unheard of artist and avoid any obvious cliches about who gets the award, such as sales or success. In the case of Badly Drawn Boy (winner in 2000), this is a good thing...M People? (winner in 1994), not so much.
The very fact that the Spice Girls were even nominated one year should make me denounce the whole thing as a pile of horse bollocks and run the streets in protest. However the shortlist does, most of the time, contain the most diverse, cutting edge and usually the best music of the past year so it's worth checking out. Just don't expect your favourite artist to win it.
Top 10 albums nominated, but not winners, for the Mercury Music Prize:
1) Oasis - Definitely Maybe
2) Radiohead - Ok Computer (what???)
3) Prodigy - Fat of the Land
4) Coldplay - Parachutes
5) Zero 7 - Simple Things
6) The Coral - The Coral
7) The Streets - Original Pirate Material
8) Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum (Speech Debelle???)
9) Ty - Upwards
10) Radiohead - In Rainbows
My vote for this year is quite obviously Mumford & Sons, but I won't hold my breath. I see it going to The XX. You heard it here first folks.
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