Mercury Music Prize

This week saw the 12th edition of the Mercury Music Prize, still named so despite the original sponsors having been defunct for many years and are now sponsored by Panasonic. The prize is awarded annually to the most deserving British or Irish album released in previous 12 months according to a panel of judges taken from the industry. A shortlist of 12 albums is arrived at and a winner is announced during a swanky televised do in London. There is something undeniably irritating about the Mercurys. Whether it’s the show on the night having pundits waxing lyrical about how the music industry needs to support new artists or the meed-dya types ...  Read the complete review

Well, to be honest, i dont really like any awards party. I personally think thy're a waste oftime because the nominations are always commercial because they're the onle cmpanies with money. This mecuy thingy is still much the same except for one difference. They try to be cool. There nominations are always the best known of any genre, so people believe that the mercury is good. In actual fact they know nothing about quality music. All peices of music out there have something good about them (well most of them). The guys at mercury cant just goto any genre pick the tip of the iceburg and claim they're good. There is a lot more to a genre then jus ...  Read the complete review

The recently announced short list for the mercury music prize shows that diversity and orginality is alive in the Uk. Lets face it, it is easy to criticise the mercury, how in reality can you compare the Radiohead's Amnesiac against Basement Jaxx's Rooty when the albums come from two completely different genres. It basically comes down to personal taste, which clearly makes the winner of the mercury a very subjective decision. However, the award will remain the most important in the Uk music industry. While the Brit's rewards popularity the Mercury remains based on the actual quality of the music rather than the promotion and popularity of the artist. ...  Read the complete review

The mercury music awards are often viewed as the most prestigous, anti-corporate, uninfluenced award ceremony in Britain. It's just one award, ONE, for the best album released in the past year. They assemble a panel of top music people, and they listen to every British album, of the past year, and they all construct their own shortlist of the best albums. From these lists, the nominees appear. Fine. Great, it sounds, but of course, there are problems with the mercury prize.. It seems to have got so big, and important, that an album from each section of the musical spectrum, HAS to get nominated, like out of politeness, every section of musical ...  Read the complete review