Nationwide Mercury Music Prize 2006

[Gigmeister General]

The shortlist for this year's Nationwide Mercury Music Prize has been announced. The winner will be announced on September 5th (and be handed a nice cheque for £20,000 as well). The nominees are...

Arctic Monkeys - 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not'
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - 'Ballad Of The Broken Seas'
Editors - 'The Back Room'
Guillemots - 'Through The Windowpane'
Richard Hawley - 'Coles Corner'
Hot Chip - 'The Warning'
Muse - 'Black Holes And Revelations'
Zoe Rahman - 'Melting Pot'
Lou Rhodes - 'Beloved One'
Scritti Politti - 'White Bread, Black Beer'
Sway - 'This Is My Demo'
Thom Yorke - 'The Eraser'

H'mm, so no Lily Allen then.

As soon as the list was announced William Hill named Arctic Monkeys and Thom Yorke as joint 5-1 favourites (Muse, Editors and Guillemots are right behind them at 6-1). More information can be found on the BBC News and NME websites; the BBC News site also has a feature on the highs and lows of winning the award.



PS Information on last year's awards can be found here.

[Villain]

Heh - have the favourites ever won ? My vote would probably be for Thom Yorke (good album), my heart would vote for Muse, but my experience says Hot Chip....

Mark Lanegan with Isobel Campbell ?! I'll need to get into some of that....

[Gigmeister General]

Arctic Monkeys.

A definite crowd pleaser of a result, Jo Whiley seemed made up at any rate, but Whatever People Say I Am.. was arguably the album of the past year (and that's coming from me, who couldn't see what all the fuss was about until I gave the lyrics greater attention).

Kudos to the Monkeys for the nod to Richard Hawley, it would've been excellent if he'd won the prize. Anyway, that's the excitement done with for another year.. move along, nothing to see here..

[Paulo]

I absolutely fudging hate the Arctic Shitkeys and wish they'd fudge off back up north where they came from, tossing wankstains.

[thisisexploding]

I'm getting the feeling you don't like them.. as I've mentioned elsewhere, I didn't see what the fuss was about when the NME started bigging them up; to be honest it was the NME's constant fawning over them that made me dislike them so. Then I found myself drunk in Scandal's this one time (no, really) and before I knew it I was singing along to I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor..

I still want them to do an EP of George Formby covers though

[Paulo]

Yeah, the whole media hype doesn't help, but they're just such an unremarkable bunch, and all the songs sound the same... oh, and all the crap about "wow, they like, write songs about everyday life that, like, we can relate to...", well whoopdee-fookin-doo, Pulp did that better 10 years ago, get over it!

I was quite pleased when they were made favourites, cos the favourites never win...

Ah well, i have no respect for a music prize that once made M People the winners anyway...



And relax... ;D