1992 - Saint Etienne - Foxbase Alpha 1993 - PJ Harvey - Rid of me 1994 - Pulp - His ‘n’ Hers 1995 - Tricky - Maxinquaye 1999 - Blur - 13 2001 - Radiohead - Amnesiac 2002 - The Streets - Original Pirate Material 2003 - Radiohead - Hail to the thief 2005 - Bloc Party - Silent Alarm 2006 - Hot Chip - The Warning 2008 - Radiohead - In Rainbows 2009 - The Horrors - Primary Colours 2010 - Wild Beasts - Two Dancers 2011 - Metronomy - The English Riviera 2013 - Jon Hopkins - Immunity 2015 - Aphex Twin - Syro 2016 - David Bowie - Blackstar 2017 - The xx - I see you 2020 - Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia 2021 - Sault - Untitled (rise) / Mogwai - As the love continues 2023 - Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy
The next instalment where we look at a year from mercury history and try to pick our runner up.
This time it’s 1997 when the prize for best British/Irish album was won by Roni Size & Reprazent - New Forms
As per usual you have up to 3 votes…
Think this was the first year I was aware of the Mercury. Remember being obsessed with OK Computer and not believing it couldn’t win. Being young and not so diversified in my taste I thought the vote for Roni Size was a case of trying too hard and that OKC was a generational record.
25 or so years later and my music appreciation is wider and I can find value in more of the albums on that list than I did then… but yeah, I was right, absolutely right.
You were. I’m definitely not much of a Radiohead fan compared to most on DIS but it is clearly the best album on the shortlist by a country mile. Not giving it the prize was just an example of the Mercury panel being confused about what they are there for - thinking they should highlight an underrated record rather than just picking the best one. Other awards panels don’t do this but the Mercury has done it many times over the years.