Mercury Music Prize 2015

It's interesting to note that the Mercury has reached a point where it's not got a sponsor as such, any more, and is "in association with BBC Music". It's a fair enough way to spend a small slice of licence fee (probably a better return on investment than the BBC Music Awards) but must be strange that the second highest profile music award in the UK can't attract an above the line sponsor.

Anyway, this year's winner is Benjamin Clementine's At Least For Now. It might be coincidence, but a lot of the BBC Four coverage found space to celebrate the 'curse of the Mercury' winners - Speech Debelle, Roni Size, Ms Dynamite - and in a way that challenged the 'last seen leaving the ceremony with a cheque for £20k, and disappeared' narrative. Perhaps a partnership with a cultural organisation like the BBC rather than the marketing department of a bank is allowing the Mercury to at last be comfortable about not caring about sales, and focus on the value of the recordings.

Benjamin was so warm in his victory, too - first inviting all the other shortlisted artists on stage; then dedicating his win to the victims of the Paris Attacks, before being overcome with emotion. Genuinely, you feel that the prize couldn't have gone to a nicer man.

Mercury Prize 2015: The shortlist

The Mercury Prize shortlist has been announced, which we'll get to a moment. But first, to celebrate the now-defunct communications company who give the name to the prize, here's a lovely video showing how they cared for their customers until they flogged them to Deutsche Telekom for about seven million quid:

So, here's the shortlist in the year that is already being called "sorry, Wolf Alice, we think it's time for one of those years the outsiders win in order to keep it exciting":

Aphex Twin: Syro
Wolf Alice: My Love Is Cool
Roisin Murphy: Hairless Toys
C Duncan: Architect
ESKA: Eska
Florence + the Machine: How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
Ghostpoet: Shedding Skin
Benjamin Clementine: At Least for Now
Jamie xx: In Colour
Soak: Before We Forgot How to Dream
Gaz Coombes: Matador
Slaves: Are You Satisfied?

The Vaccines haven't been nominated, you'll note, but they're not bothered at all, oh no. No. Not. Remotely. Bothered. In fact, they're so not bothered, they're making sure everyone knows how unbothered they are:

Speaking to NME, [Justin Hayward] Young said: "We've never been nominated so we never expect to be."

He added: "The cafetiere-drinking, Kentish Town-dwelling, Pizza East, 6 Music listener; that's not our demographic."

To be frank, I'm not sure there's anything more Kentish Town/Pizza East than describing your fans as "our demographic", but let's set that aside.

I'm more curious about "cafetiere-drinking" - as opposed to what? Is it better to use a Nespresso machine? Do Vaccine fans only drink instant? It's a surprising insult.

Perhaps "pushing 30s, Kings College history graduate, mates-with-Mumford, relocating to a loft in New York Chinatown" might have been a more succinct way of summing up a typical Mercury Music Award target, although that may be a little close to home for Young.

What's really confusing, though, is why - if the 6Music listener isn't their demographic - why the band played live on 6Music to launch the album, and providing the network with exclusive first plats of other tracks. Perhaps they had yet to discover the delights of Aeropress at that point.

Mercurys snap Twigs; Young Fathers victory doesn't really impress

Last night was the Mercury Music Prize. It's now found a home on More4, so let's hope the nominees remembered to offer some tips on redeveloping houses otherwise the regular audience would have been very confused.

This was the shortlist:

Anna Calvi – One Breath
Bombay Bicycle Club – So Long, See You Tomorrow
Damon Albarn – Everyday Robots
East India Youth – Total Strife Forever
FKA twigs – LP1
GoGo Penguin – v2.0
Jungle – Jungle
Kate Tempest – Everybody Down
Nick Mulvey – First Mind
Polar Bear – In Each and Every One
Royal Blood – Royal Blood

A golden year for the shortlist, because it's the first time both penguins and polar bears have been represented, honouring both arctic and antarctic creatures.

But it seemed fairly certain that FKA Twigs would waltz it. I would imagine she'd already ordered a new sofa from DFS expecting the cash prize to be hers.

Except that didn't happen.

Today I will mostly be asking 'WHO THE BLOODY HELL ARE THE YOUNG FATHERS WHEN THEY'RE AT HAME?'

— John Niven (@NivenJ1) October 30, 2014

Yes, Young Fathers won. And the world...?

Who? Ah, of course! *writes down 'Young… Fathers…'*

— Andy Dawson (@profanityswan) October 29, 2014

Who the fuck are the Young Fathers?

— Carl (@RFCCSN) October 30, 2014

Why haven't I heard of Young Fathers before?!

— Kimberley Blythe (@Kimbosss) October 30, 2014

The world wasn't so much surprised as confused.

And then decided that it must have been one of those Mercury years.

Young Fathers wint de Mercury Prize? Really? De nieuwe Speech Debelle http://t.co/UNmvYgKS80

— Atze de Vrieze (@atzedevrieze) October 30, 2014

The one where they give it to a Roni Size or someone to show that it's not just about popularity.

It must suck to be in Young Fathers - "hey, guys, you've made the best album of the year and so everyone's now decided you're Speech Debelle v2.0". They're actually better than that. But that's not going to stop people complaining:

Who has heard of Young Fathers? Best album at Mercury prize. How is that possible when no one has ever heard of them????

— mike taylor™ (@miket_343) October 30, 2014

'How can this possibly be the best album if I've never heard of it' perhaps misses the point of the Mercury, which is supposed to bring under-appreciated albums to wider attention.

Mostly, though, it's been about weak jokes based on the band's name:

#r4today Doesn't "young fathers" seem to encourage underage sex?

— DinoGreycat (@dinogreycat) October 30, 2014

Mercury Music Prize 2013 hit by awkward name embarrassment

There was an awkward moment during the live televising of last night's Mercury Music Prize, with a slip-up being made around the winner's name.

"It was mortifying" explained one of the judges. "We tried to say the name 'David Bowie' but somehow it came out as 'James Blake', who is, of course, quite a different person.

Seriously, you can understand Lauren Laverne accidentally muddling her nice-chap-but-dull-musicians up, because they have pretty similar names. All she did was replace "ake" with "unt" - admittedly, that would have been terrible if Cake had been the winners.

BBC World News' coverage of the prize last night ended with the optimistic claim that Blake can now expect a higher profile and a rise in sales. You could hear Speech Debelle's "huh" from this side of the Atlantic.

Blake has pledged not to piss the £20,000 prize money for Overgrown up a wall. But then he does have the aura of a man who has a portfolio of ISA investments, doesn't he?

Mercury 2013: Apparently a level playing field for Bowie & Bugg

So, the shortlist for the Mercurys was released yesterday, and it's in no way undermined by having found space for both James Blake and Jake Bugg on it.

Obviously, Bowie, who managed to combine a re-entry into music, releasing an album and pulling off a coup de theatre should just be given the prize now - for if the remit of the Mercury is intended to promote the idea of an album as an event, releasing the only album that created a stir beyond the music press surely did that?

Of course, it might not have been as good as the Savages album, but that's not really the point.

Here's the list in full:

Arctic Monkeys - AM
David Bowie - The Next Day
Disclosure - Settle
Foals - Holy Fire
Jake Bugg - Jake Bugg
James Blake - Overgrown
Jon Hopkins - Immunity
Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle (pictured)
Laura Mvula - Sing to the Moon
Rudimental - Home
Savages - Silence Yourself
Villagers - Awayland

Has anyone gone to ask One Direction fans if they have any problem with the shortlist?

Mercury Prize 2012: Alt-J quickly given their prize

There's a lumbering headline from the Daily Mail which, though gauche, pretty much sums it up:

Electronic quartet Alt-J are handed the prestigious 2012 Mercury Music Prize after being named the favourites to scoop the title

Okay, to be accurate nobody went "they're the favourites, so we better hand them the prize", but you can see what the Mail is getting at. It wasn't much of a surprise, and we're probably a good year or two away from a well-meaning presentation of the cheque to an outsider from whom we shall never hear again.

Let's just take a quick look at the coverage, shall we? This year the prize moved from BBC2 to Channel 4, who gamely made space in the schedule for the announcement.

Not very much space, though: just a five minute slot.

Ah, but Channel 4 is a family of channels, right. So was there a bigger programme on More4?

Erm, no.

E4?

Nope.

Ah! Here we are, 4Music had a longer live programme.

Yes you do, 4Music, over on Sky Channel 330.

Now, it might make sense for the awarding of music's most literary prize to be on a music channel. Except 4Music isn't really a music channel - the awards were sandwiched between three hours of Kim Kardashian and an old 8 Out Of Ten Cats. It's a bit like bunging the Turner Prize out on CITV because the channel once showed Art Attack.

Oh. But still, on a sort-of dedicated channel, there's room for a decent chunk of programming, right?

Nope. Just a thirty programme, like there used to be on BBC2.

So, no extra coverage, just hidden away on a less-appropriate channel.

I'm not sure if I was the sponsors I'd be that thrilled at this exciting new profile.

Mercury rising

The big news about this year's Mercury Music Prize is that the long tradition of a gentle-fluff from Jools Holland as the winner is announced has come to an end; from now on, Lauren Laverne will be at the podium trying to explain to the young winner what this "cheque" thing she's just given them is. Or maybe it'll be all modern now, and they'll contactless technology to transfer the prize money.

There's a knock-on, of course, as now Lauren is going to be trying to keep the room interested after the third bottle of wine, the BBC are going to need a new host for the TV coverage. I understand Jools Holland's become free on that night.

Anyway, there's no point in having a presenter without a competition. Here's the shortlist and odds:

Richard Hawley: 'Standing At The Sky's Edge' – 4/1
Plan B: ‘Ill Manors’ – 4/1
Alt-J (∆): 'An Awesome Wave' – Odds 5/1
Django Django: 'Django Django' – 5/1
The Maccabees: 'Given To The Wild' – 7/1
Jessie Ware: 'Devotion' – 7/1
Ben Howard – ‘Every Kingdom’ 8/1
Michael Kiwanuka: 'Home Again' – 8/1
Lianne La Havas – ‘Is Your Love Big Enough’ – 8/1
Field Music: ‘Plum’ – 10/1
Roller Trio – ‘Roller Trio’ – 10/1
Sam Lee – ‘Ground Of Its Own’ – 10/1

The odds - from William Hill - suggest that whoever did them didn't really have much of an idea what they were doing. "The jazzy one probably won't win, will it? But what if it does? I'll give that the same odds as the folky one. Shit, but what if this year is the one they give it to the token album to pretend it's not about having a token album. I know, I'll just group everything round six-ish to one and hope.

Mercurys 2012: Odds

Now, I don't have a problem with someone from Ladbrokes saying Alt-J are favourites to win the Mercury Prize. It's just... this bit:

The band's debut album 'An Awesome Wave' is currently the even money favourite to win the yearly £20,000 prize. A representative from the high street bookies told NME:

The four-piece have brought something different and innovative to the party which punters have latched onto. It will be a huge upset if anyone else picks up this year's Mercury Prize and it won't be long before Alt-J are considered as the 'new Radiohead'.

Really? Ladbrokes doing music criticism? Are we to expect HMV to start telling us about fetlocks and the like?

What does "it won't be long before Alt-J are considered as the new Radiohead" mean anyway? Why, if they're going to be the new Radiohead, are they not already being considered the new Radiohead? Do they have to complete a slightly stuttery start to win that title?

Or are they set to be the new Radiohead in the 'never actually winning the Mercury Prize' sense? But that can't be the case, because the man from the bookies says they're going to win.

It's all very odd. But would you take a bookie's word for it?

Don't listen to him; he's convinced it's going to be Burial.

J unaware of PJ

There's been a bit of a fluster over Jessie J's revelation she doesn't know the work of Polly Jean:

When asked to comment on PJ Harvey’s win, the ‘Price Tag’ and ‘Do It Like A Dude’ star confessed that she’d never heard of her, but vowed to explore her back catalogue after the interview, asking, “Is she good then?”

Is it really so surprising that a 23 year-old didn't spend a lot of time listening to classic era John Peel? I'll bet she doesn't know who Silverfish were, either.

Wasn't the point of the Mercury when it launched - alongside promoting the now-defunct Cable And Wireless domestic telephony service - to introduce people to music they might not otherwise have come across? Isn't that job done?

Mercury Prize 2011: Very little to add

So, now we've got a second truth to add to "winning the Mercury curses your career": PJ Harvey always wins in a year which ends in a 1.

It was a bit of an odd show on BBC Two. Not least, there was Jools Holland twice confusing "album" and "envelope", which isn't great for an album award prizegiving. Maybe he was nipping up the road to do the Stationery Suppliers Awards afterwards.

Polly's acceptance speech reference to September 11th 2001 seemed surprisingly ill-judged; like a thought that truncated itself for fear of accidentally turning into a funny anecdote about mass murder.

But: in a strong field Let England Shake is a worthy winner. See you at the 2021 awards, Polly.

Mercury Music Prize 2011: The shortlist

The Mercurys have a knack of choosing terrible days for their big announcements, don't they? Obviously, holding your shortlist launch on the same day as the Murdoch-Murdoch-Brooks fibathon isn't quite on a par with the eclipsing of the 2001 prize giving, but even so, it's hardly the best time to do it.

Here's the shortlist:

Adele - 21
Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys!
Everything Everything - Man Alive
Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam
Gwilym Simcock - Good Days At Schloss Elmau
James Blake - James Blake
Katy B - On A Mission
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine
Metronomy - The English Riviera
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Tinie Tempah - Disc-Overy

There's the usual mix of acts on there - couple of previous winners, couple of smarter indie acts, couple of "urban" acts, the one jazz guy hoping that this will be the year that they decide to give it to the jazz guy to prove the award's credentials in the face of generating disappointment.

And, as ever, there's obvious titles missing - you'd have thought Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells would have been right up the shortlist's favourite street, and the only plausible explanation for it not showing up is that - under the unwritten quota system - King Creosote & Jon Hopkins would have had to move over to make room.

I'm guessing Cornershop didn't remember or didn't care to enter themselves.

Still: Metronomy, surely? Surely?

Mercury Music Prize: Well done, theme from General Election 2010

Congratulations, then, to The XX for their victory in the Mercury Music Prize last night.

The Sun describes their reaction to winning as "low-key", which appears to mean they didn't invite anyone from The Sun to their party afterwards.

It's a great album, but perhaps the safest choice - maybe second-safest, after Mr. Rascal. I suppose with both Lauren Laverne and Miranda Sawyer heavily pregnant on the balcony, the judges were afraid that going for a shock winner might have sent Jools Holland scurrying for hot water and towels.

Incidentally, was Jools having a bad night last night or did it just come across that way on the TV? It looked like he'd not only opened the winner envelope prematurely, but that he'd also had a quick peek inside the prize money envelope before he'd handed it over. It made the prize giving look more like that awkward moment when the bloke from upstairs knocks on the door clutching your Giro in a raggedy envelope and mumbles "sorry, mate, didn't see it was addressed to you before I opened it..."

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: The Mercury Shortlist

The list of bands who'll be playing the little event prior to Jools Holland announcing the winner of the Mercury Music Prize has been published. The Guardian's got the latest odds:

Dizzee Rascal – Tongue N' Cheek (4/1)
The xx – xx (4/1)
Paul Weller – Wake Up the Nation (6/1)
Corinne Bailey Rae – The Sea (6/1)
Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More (6/1)
Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can (6/1)
Foals – Total Life Forever (8/1)
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (8/1)
Biffy Clyro – Only Revolutions (8/1)
Villagers – Becoming a Jackal (10/1)
Kit Downes Trio – Golden (10/1)
I Am Kloot – Sky at Night (10/1)

The subtle shift from throwing a spotlight on overlooked acts, into being an echo chamber for the broadsheet reviews pages, seems to have been completed.

It's a list without very much that you can say about it - and that's just the sort of vacuum that Gennaro Castaldo exists to fill:

Gennaro Castaldo, of entertainment retailer HMV, said: "If you look back at the Mercury awards over the years, the most successful nominated and winning albums tend to be the ones that have been 'bubbling under' for a while and building great word of mouth and critical acclaim, so that, when the judges do shine the spotlight on them, sales can take off in a very significant way.

"If the winner is a little too obscure or their music a bit too left field, as was arguably the case last year with Speech Debelle, then it may prove difficult to make that all-important connection with a wider, more mainstream audience.

"Equally, if the winner is already very well-known and has already enjoyed substantial sales, then any increase in sales and interest may also be more modest.

"It's really about finding just the right balance - so that an album is chosen both because it's a truly outstanding recording, but also because, in being selected, it has the potential to 'cross over' and go on to reach a much wider audience - as we saw with the 2008 winners Elbow."

If you nodded off during that, allow me to summarise: on behalf of people who sell records, Gennaro Castaldo stared madly at them and growled through unsmiling teeth "if you pick someone like Speech Debelle this year, we will hunt you down and pelt you with boxes of unsold copies of Speech Therapy - got it?"

Mercury Prize: Not a guarantee of big sellers

A handy chunk of data has been made available by the Guardian, in spreadsheet take-it-and-mash format, detailing not just the winners of the Mercury, but also how well they sold and the highest chart position.

So, just three Mercury albums have been number one - Suede by Suede, Different Class by Pulp and Whatever People Say... by the Arctic Monkeys.

Only three have sold more than a million - Franz Ferdinand, Pulp and the Monkeys.

Only one album failed to make the top 40, and that's also the lowest-selling album of them all: Talvin Singh's OK.

So, we now know that the average sale of a Mercury Prize Winner is a bit over 500,000 - 580882, to be precise.

And the average chart position is 10.

A top ten record and half a million sales? It sounds like the very model of a tolerably well-performing record. Not too flash, not setting the bar so high that the performance of the next record will disappoint, but good enough to guarantee the label will pony up for it.

Gordon in the morning: Mercury rising

Yesterday, readers of Gordon's column were sent to the bookies almost certain of a Mercury win for Florence And The Machine, mainly - admittedly - on the strength of 'giving Gordon an excuse to print a sexy picture':

FLORENCE WELCH is the front-runner to scoop glory at tonight's Mercury Music Awards.

And if she does bag the 20 grand prize for 2009's best album, I suspect that by the end of the evening she could be pulling a similar pose to this - crawling around London's Grosvenor House Hotel.

So, this morning Sun readers must be... apparently not at all surprised at the outcome:

The Sun's Something For The Weekend section said last week that Speech was the "most deserving" nominee.

Still, regardless of Speech's win, Gordon knows where the moral victory is, and marks the occasion with a large, sexy photo of Florence Welch in a short leather skirt.

Elsewhere, Yoko Ono popped up at the GQ "man of the year" awards. You can calibrate how well-judged these prizes are by considering that they believe Guy Ritchie to be filmmaker of the year and George Osbourne to be politician of the year (a view which even David Cameron would double-take.) Yoko's appearance was yet another part of the grinding publicity for the Beatles Game ("was quite a coup for the magazine publishers"), but she ended up being asked to talk about Take That:

Beaming Yoko said: "I love Shine. I know most of their greatest hits. They're a great British band."

It might sound like faint praise to you, but she didn't have to write any of the names on her hand, and she didn't go "that one from the adverts with Alan Hansen in - that's one of theirs, isn't it?"

Gordon, though, senses high praise:

And the feeling's mutual.

Mark said: "It's amazing that Yoko thinks that about our music. It is an honour to accept an award from her."

"I quite like some of their greatest hits" and "it's nice that Yoko quite likes our greatest hits". Mutual love-in, isn't it?

By the time this has been processed for an article teaser, it comes out as this:

Yoko Ono: TT are new Fab 4

JOHN Lennon’s widow is a big fan of the man band – naming Shine as her favourite track

Or at least the one that somebody whispered in her ear before she went on stage.

Mercury Music Prize: Liveblog

Lauren Laverne, eh? God, how quickly did Jo Whiley fall from favour?

Rather than detain us with large chunks of music, we're whistling through small chunks of the nominated bands. Miranda Sawyer and Nihal are offering opinions - Nihal suggesting that Speech is a Mercury judge's idea of a hip-hop album. Which is a fair point.

The EPG is calling the programme "packed", which with the need to have some runners-and-riders, a form discussion and the actual announcement is a bit of an understatement.

Blimey - Elly Jackson seems to have had whatever the quiff equivalent of a hair extension is to celebrate the evening.

Nihal has dismissed The Horrors, which seems a bit rich considering he was suggesting that it was a bit rocksnob to have a pop at Kasabian.

Miranda Sawyer is suggesting Bat For Lashes should go a bit bonkers. "It's a beautiful album, but... beautiful mixed with something. But to win the Mercury Music Prize, is it enough?" ponders Nihal.

Time for the announcement, then: Jools Holland, naturally, is the MC. Everyone gets a little ripple of applause because we're all winners, right?

"Let's remind ourselves what those twelve people albums are" mumbles Jools, like a man who is doing his best to try and make Fearne Cotton feel better.

"Moment of truth... fever pitch... esteemed judges" - a quick tour of Holland cliches - "only one can win." No, really?

Although his "we don't applaud money, we applaud talent" is a good joke, a bit undermined in an event which is sponsored by a bank and makes a lot of its twenty grand prize.

The result is "a surprise", drags out Jools: The winner is Speech.

Speech Debelle. I don't think anyone saw that coming (I typed just as Aaron S tweeted that.)

So, who knew that this was a year for the judges to pretend that it's not really just a rock prize? Clearly not Speech, who - ironically - had come without a speech prepared.

As one, the world looks up and says "anything that wasn't Kasabian can't be wrong, can it?"

In her winner's interview, Speech has just mentioned that Ms Dynamite winning the Mercury was an "inspiration" - although since that was a gate swinging to open a not-entirely glittering career, that seems a bit ominous. Still, at least she didn't say it was Roni Size who shaped her dreams.

Here comes Newsnight, then.

Mercury shortlist: Effort undermined by presence of Kasabian

No, seriously: what's the point of a shortlist for an award for the best album which features Kasabian at all? Sure, there's lots of names on the list which stand up to critical consideration: The lovely Lisa Hannigan album; La Roux's debut; Friendly Fires of course. You can see The Horrors have earned a place there - even if the early claims that they'd totally reinvented themselves were a little overstating the case, there's enough evidence of a band thinking things through to make them worth considering.

But Kasabian?

Their response to being shortlisted says, pretty much, where the band are creatively:

Kasabian's Tom Meighan said: "I like making music but it's really nice to get the recognition. I think it's deserved, why not, eh?"

It's like someone reading an abandoned Noel Gallagher thought of the back of a napkin, isn't it?

The BBC insist that La Roux are leading the nominations, although bookies seem to think that Kasabian and Florence and The Machine are.

Here's the shortlist in full, with - excitingly - latest betting odds:

Florence and the Machine, “Lungs.” 5/1
Kasabian, “West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.” 5/1
Bat for Lashes, “Two Suns.” 6/1
La Roux, “La Roux.” 6/1
Glasvegas, “Glasvegas.” 6/1
Speech Debelle, “Speech Therapy.” 8/1
Friendly Fires, “Friendly Fires.” 8/11
The Horrors, “Primary Colours.” 8/1
Lisa Hannigan, “Sea Sew.” 8/1
The Invisible, “The Invisible.” 10/1
Led Bib, “Sensible Shoes.” 10/1
Sweet Billy Pilgrim, “Twice Born Men.” 10/1

More interesting than the shortlist is the change in sponsor - following on from the now-defunct Mercury, Technics and the Nationwide Building Society is Barclaycard. A credit card company? Sponsoring a music prize? (Like, erm, Mastercard's support for the Brits?) So out goes the prudent, cash-careful Building Society in favour of a debt-driving credit concern. Interesting choice.

[Related: The Lisa Hannigan weekend]

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: He knows his Elbow

Presumably to avoid the need to pay for people to write stuff, Metro hands over a large chunk of its post-Mercurys coverage to Gennaro Castaldo:

HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said: "Following Elbow's popular Mercury win, The Seldom Seen Kid is currently selling four times as many copies at HMV as it was before the ceremony.

"That's a pretty big pick up for such a relatively short time, and with more sales to come over the weekend, when music fans will be out in force, the band look set to enjoy one of the biggest lifts ever seen by a Mercury prize winner.

"A lot of music fans will be aware of the band and their music, but may not have got round to buying one of their albums before.

"The main purpose of the Mercury's is to shine a light on music that deserves to be listened to by a wider audience, and Elbow are certainly in line to make a lot of new fans, and to take their profile to the next level."

I'm a little bemused by this, to be honest - what sort of person would know about a band but not actually bother buying a record until it had won some sort of award? How does that work, exactly? Are there really people who won't touch a record unless Simon Frith has listened to it for them first?

And since the point of the Mercury is to boost sales, wouldn't you expect the lift in sales to be instantaneous? Does Gennaro really find it surprising? Would he really have thought "well, it'll take about a month and a half for that prize to generate an upswing in sales"?

Gordon in the morning: Good lord, a story worth reading

Apart from the over-liberal use of corny, Our Tune style phrases like "tragic pal" - oh, and the "you won't have heard of Elbow before" info-box - Gordon's story this morning on Elbow dedicating their Mercury award to the Bryan Glancy is actually a decent story.

It could almost make up for a big splash about Amy Winehouse's new "secret country retreat" that, erm, does virtually everything besides providing a Google Map. Almost, but not quite.

Burial buried

Elbow - who, yes, have improved noticeably since no longer having major label bosses making helpful suggestions - have won the Mercury Music Prize.

Not Burial, then, despite the cash being poured in support of his album down the bookies.

Guy Garvey is delighted:

"This is quite literally the best thing that's ever happened to us."

Although that's probably what Roni Size thought.