🎤 Mercury Prize - The best of the rest (2021) 🎤

Music
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Here are the 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

Today we look back to 2021. In 2021 the award was won by Arlo Parks - Collapsed in sunbeams. Quite a strong year imo.

As per normal we are voting for the album that should have been awarded 2nd prize. You have up to 3 votes…

  • Berwyn - Demotape/vega
  • Black Country, New road - For the first time
  • Celeste - Not your muse
  • Floating points / Pharaoh Sanders/ London symphony - Promises
  • Ghetts - Conflict of interest
  • Hannah Peel - Fir wave
  • Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
  • Mogwai - As the love continues
  • Nubya Garcia - Source
  • Sault - Untitled (rise)
  • Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
0 voters
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good year imho

Wolf Alice for me, big step up for their previous work and in my top 5 of the year

not vintage Mogwai but it’ll do nicely, and did like a lot of that Sault album before they went off in their current very uninteresting phase

BCNR is interesting, but Ants is so much better that this one doesn’t feel that relevant to me

3

2021 wasn’t long ago but sometimes albums take a few years to imbed and I probably appreciate some of these albums more than I did then.

Mogwai - best non soundtrack album in a decade

Sault - their best album

Laura Mvula - Her best album

Wolf Alice - Their best album

Hannah Peel - love this album. Her best work.

Like you say - BCNR not as good as what was about to come.
Man this is gonna be tough!!

2 Likes
4

Nubya and Sault are head and shoulders over all the rest.

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If anybody is interested. Here is the 2021 judging panel:
The 2021 Hyundai Mercury Prize judges are: Anna Calvi – Musician & Songwriter; Annie Mac – Broadcaster & DJ; Danielle Perry – Broadcaster & Writer; Gemma Cairney – Broadcaster & DJ; Hazel Wilde (from Lanterns on the Lake) - Musician & Songwriter; Jamie Cullum - Musician & Broadcaster; Jeff Smith - Head of Music, 6 Music & Radio 2; Michael Kiwanuka - Musician & Songwriter; Mike Walsh - Music Consultant; Phil Alexander – Creative Director, Kerrang!/Contributing Editor, Mojo; Tshepo Mokoena – Editorial Director, VICE.com; Will Hodgkinson - Chief Rock & Pop Critic, The Times. The Chair of the judging panel is Jeff Smith .

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Actually never listened to Nubya solo despite loving the Nerija group album she did - should correct that

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I know Floating Points / Pharaoh Sanders got a lot of love on this forum but it never did anything for me.

1 Like
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Same. Technically brilliant, but not something i’m ever in the mood to listen to.

2 Likes
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Take away Wolf Alice’s win for Visions of a Life and give it to them for Blue Weekend instead.

The SAULT album is also great, but like with Burial I think being anonymous (for want of a better word) meant they were never going to win anyway (apart from PJ Harvey being in Washington D.C. on Sep 11th 2001 has any winner ever not been at the ceremony?)

2 Likes
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Hannah Peel album is good. She was playing it live in Bangor on Saturday night which I would have been up for going to but was already seeing Maija Sofia in Belfast the same night.

1 Like
11

Berwyn’s performance on the telly was really good for this

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I remember Mogwai sounding quite bad at the Mercurys

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I actually don’t know. I know a lot of the nominees haven’t bothered going over the years.

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I wanted to check it out so I’m sharing it here…

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Star Trek Applause GIF

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This is a great performance too…

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:heart:

1 Like
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Yeah Stuart’s vocal was a bit off key, they probably should have stuck to an instrumental for safety

2 Likes
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Yeah I remember thinking that at the time. Thought they would’ve done Dry Fantasy or one of the other instrumentals.

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:heart:

1 Like