🎤 Mercury Prize - The best of the rest (2008) 🎤

Music
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Here are our previous winners from these polls:
1995 - Tricky - Maxinquaye
1999 - Blur - 13
2001 - Radiohead - Amnesiac
2009 - The Horrors - Primary Colours
2011 - Metronomy - The English Riviera
2013 - Jon Hopkins - Immunity
2017 - The xx - I see you
2021 - Sault - Untitled (rise) / Mogwai - As the love continues

Today we travel back to 2008. In 2008 the award was won by Elbow for The seldom seen kid. But who made the second best album on the shortlist?

As always you can vote for up to 3 albums.

  • Adele - 19
  • Sea Power - Do you like rock music?
  • Burial - Untrue
  • Estelle - Shine
  • The last shadow puppets - The age of the understatement
  • Laura Marling - Alas, I cannot swim
  • Neon Neon - Stainless Style
  • Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
  • Portico Quartet - Knee Deep in the North Sea
  • Radiohead - In Rainbows
  • Rachel Unthank and the winterset - The Bairns
0 voters
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the best BSP album, the best Radiohead album, and one of the best modern jazz albums with Portico - what a lineup

Laura and Burial to round out a great top 5, all of which are better than that Elbow album as well

1 Like
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Looking back Elbow beating Untrue and In Rainbows probably the biggest fuck up the judges have made

7 Likes
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The Judging panel in 2008:

Charles Hazlewood - Conductor
Kitty Empire - Observer Music editor
Janis Long - Radio 2
George Ergatoudis - Head of Radio 1
Conor McNicholas - NME

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5

The seldom seen kid was and is a great album though imo
Stunning performance too…

3 Likes
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lol Elbow?

amazing

1 Like
9

Untrue and In Rainbows. Probably the most DiS vote i’ll ever make.

2 Likes
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Untrue hadn’t attained mythic status at that point (as acclaimed as it was when it came out) and knowing the Mercury they were never going to give it to someone who wouldn’t be there to accept it anyway.

The Seldom Seen Kid is very good too, all those first four Elbow albums are

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i love that plant & krauss album, there i said it

untrue & in rainbows both good too, obvs

1 Like
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In rainbows probably worth a vote but I’ve obviously rejected it so that Untrue might get the win it deserves.

(Radiohead - 99%)

2 Likes
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Burial, Neon Neon and Rachel Unthank for me.

In Rainbows is fine and all, but I never clicked with it massively, still surprises me that a lot of people think it’s their best.

1 Like
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Radiohead and Adele together at last.

Shocking that Untrue didn’t win this.

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Burial, In Rainbows, Portico Quartet

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Conor mcnicholas ewwww

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They were everywhere after that win

Disclaimer: i love a lot of early elbow stuff

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In rainbows was, and i dont say this lightly, life changing for me

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BSP, Marling, Neon Neon. That’s me votes, deal with it!

1 Like
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Really good year. I’m NOT just saying that cos I was 15 at the time!!! Loads of good records and adele

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Think Elbow winning it that year looks worse now with their subsequent success and the fact that the quality of their albums went down quite a lot after that.

IIRC at the time it was seen as recognition of one of the most consistent British bands of that decade, and gave them a nice little boost up in status. Untrue and In Rainbows are better albums, but I don’t think it’s that weird a call. And it’s a very good album tbf.

2 Likes
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2 hours left to get your votes in.