Wednesday 21 July 2010



Mercury rising

2010 Barclaycard Mercury Prize Shortlist announced

Lauar Marling's Mercury-nominated 'I Speak Because I Can'

Yesterday Lauren Laverne, former Kinickie guitarist/vocalist and current BBC 6music DJ, took to the podium to reveal the shortlist for this year’s Barclaycard Mercury Prize (formerly the Mercury Music Prize before sponsorship money necessitated a name change).  Like Canada’s own Polaris Music Prize, the Mercury is awarded to the best album of the year coming from the United Kingdom and Ireland, and is selected by a panel of musicians, music executives, journalists and others in the music industry.  Since starting in 1992 as an antidote to the industry-love fest that is the Brit Awards, the Mercury Prize has recognized some amazing outsider talent and helped boost the careers of many nominees (this is all sounding very familiar, isn’t it?).  Last year’s winner was Speech Debelle‘s debut album Speech Therapy, beating out the likes of Glasvegas, Florence and the Machine, Kasabian and La Roux.  In 2008, the prize went to a very deserving Elbow for their brilliant The Seldom Seen Kid (a QBiM favourite of the year), and over the years has been bestowed upon the likes of Pulp, Suede, Portishead, PJ Harvey, Franz Ferdinand, Antony and the Johnsons, and inaugural winner Primal Scream.

This year’s list continues the tradition of mixing newcomers with more established veterans, first-time nominees and repeat offenders, ensuring there will be many spirited debates and discussion in the coming months, before the award is actually presented in September (again, all very familiar, no?).  The 2010 Barclaycard Mercury Prize nominees are:

Biffy Clyro, Only Revolutions
Villagers, Becoming A Jackal
Corinne Bailey Rae, The Sea
Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More
Paul Weller, Wake Up The Nation
Wild Beasts, Two Dancers
Kit Downes Trio, Golden
Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can
Dizzee Rascal, Tongue N’ Cheek
Foals, Total Life Forever
I Am Kloot, Sky At Night
The xx, xx

MP3: Laura Marling “Ghosts”
Myspace: Laura Marling
MP3: The xx “Basic Space”
Myspace: The xx
MP3: Villagers “Becoming a Jackal”
Myspace: Villagers





by J. Di Gioia | Comments Off

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.