Mercury Music Prize 2019

It’s basically trying to be like the Oscars isn’t it - wants the award to go to something that is critically acclaimed but which has relatively mainstream commercial potential.

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Yeah, nothing against Wolf Alice as a band but as a post further down has said, My Queen Is was a jazz album that transcended it’s supposed niche - timely, fierce and a genuinely brilliant record. Baffling decision.

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It’s only baffling if you don’t look at who is picking the winner

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Since Elbow won in 2008, a year when Burial’s Untrue, one of the greatest albums of the 21st century was nominated, it’s been particularly struggling for credibility. Last year was a real opportunity to make a splash by giving it to Sons of Kemet but they went for a pretty mainstream sounding guitar band. As others have said, when you look at the people on the panel it’s hard to expect anything particularly adventurous.

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Must admit I don’t take much notice of it - I kind of assumed it had settled into a sort of 6 music groove but maybe not even that interesting?

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I suppose. It’s just a tad depressing when a panel is put together supposedly representing a forward-thinking, diverse cross section of the British music industry and the end result feels like such a beige compromise. But this is perhaps more of an indictment of such a muddled award in the first place.

It’s a bit weird they they even bother nominating albums by acts more than two albums in seeing as they almost never win - since Pulp it’s just been PJ Harvey twice, Elbow and Skepta. Either make the winners more evenly distributed or just make it a debut album award

It’s just intrinsically silly to compare such vastly different albums. I have huge love for both but I couldn’t tell you I prefer one to the other because they have totally different musical roles to play in my life.

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Could be a lot worse, The Zutons, The Darkness and Hard Fi all almost won apparently!

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That’s the inherent problem with the prize of course, as Anthony Hegarty said in his acceptance speech. I don’t agree with you about the equal merits of the Elbow and Burial albums though. I don’t have anything particularly against Elbow, but Untrue is just such a singular, original and utterly brilliant piece of work that it is on a completely different plane. Time has not diminished it at all - you still hear its influence all over the place.

I just think the judges looked at it and thought it was too obscure and ‘difficult’ - choosing Elbow instead was a safe choice.

Personally I think there have only been only four unarguably great British albums since 2000 - Kid A, Let England Shake, Untrue and Blackstar - and only one of them won the Mercury. You could make a case for Back to Black as well, but that didn’t win either. These are not obscure records they’re missing - they were all massively critically acclaimed at the time. I mean, I know it’s only my opinion but I don’t think I’m massively out on a limb here.

Ladbrokes currently have Dave as fave at 4/1.

Then slowthai, Idles, The 1975, Self Esteem, Fat White Family, Foals, The Twilight Sad, James Blake, Soak.

Aye Mogic completely passed me by until I listened to that Stewart Lee/Richard Dawson Late Junction at Christmas. Saw them live recently, great stuff.

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Richard Dawson is a national treasure. His solo live shows are extraordinary.

Can argue that Kid A and Blackstar didn’t need to win the Mercury though

Kind of funny that they nominated Amnesiac instead of Kid A.

I didn’t speak to their ‘merit’ at all. Just said I love both in different ways.

Edit: don’t mean this to seem combative. My hill to die on on DiS is that objective assessments of music are silly

I only like 2 of those :wink:

I’m not meaning to be combative either, the view that all music prizes, especially ones that try to cover all genres, are inherently silly is a completely respectable one, although given that we spend half our time on DIS arguing about the respective merits of different records this might not be the place for it.

You can consider all of my comments in this thread as having the implied rider ‘if the concept of a ‘best album of the year prize’ is valid then…’

it should go to Adelle or Coldplay or Ed Sheeran - whoever made the most people the most happy :wink:

We’ve already got The BRITs for that. Hence the Mercury’s difficulty in deciding what it is for.

Mercury is the same concept but for 40 year old white men :wink:

I’ve always loved the approach taken by Canada’s Polaris prize - no entry fee, with shortlisting conducted by a simple poll amongst jurors (a longlist of 40 is then made public, and whittled down to 10 by a further jury poll). The list of winners since its inception comes across as more considered and have aged far better than the Mercurys: Final Fantasy, Fucked Up, Arcade Fire, Caribou, Godspeed…

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