If you liked David Gray read this (Mercury Music Prize)

Member Name: eagle

Product:	Mercury Music Prize
Date:	29/07/01 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Diversity, Orginality

Disadvantages: Subjective

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.
Critics have said that a few big names are always included to raise sales of the compilation album. I would disagree with this stance for two reasons. Firstly, if big bands release innovative material like Radiohead this should be recognised by the award, the prize is not just for the best debut band of the year, and to retain its prestige all forms of music whether commericial or underground should be considered.
Secondly, I personally feel that the presence of two or three big names would make little difference to sales. It would have been easy to include Travis or the Stereophonics but the sort of buyer who would not own their albums is far more likely to purchase a Now! complilation rather than anything relating to the Mercury. Also as far as I'm aware TV coverage of the event has always been late at night so I doubt many extra viewers would be obtained by another rendition of Sing.
The award is important to recognise good music from all domains and to also highlight the brilliance that exists in many non commercial acts. Unfortunatly in the image obssesed pop market acts like Turin Brakes would never otherwise get a chance of achieving the breakthrough that their music deserves. With so much exposure given to pop trash, only the real dedicated music follower will have heard of m
any of the acts on the shortlist. The mercury is important because it attempts to highlight the year's best music regardless of commercial success, and by doing so gives publicity to many brilliant but unheard of acts. It is not the fault of the award that these acts are unknown but the music industry who fail to expose these artists to the public.
Although he was never up for the award, just look at the sales now achieved by David Gray once his music has reached the mainstream.

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