Tonight, guest host Connie McLaughlin and I will be talking about (and listening to) the Mercury Prize, which famously (sometimes controversially!) focuses on the album as a whole, apparently prioritising artistic merit over commercial success. Last Thursday, we saw English Teacher take home the 2024 prize for This Could Be Texas. But before we get into their music, let’s explore some of the most notable winners in the Mercury’s history.
The Prize was established in 1992 by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and British Association of Record Dealers (BARD). It was conceived as an alternative to the more commercial Brit Awards, and was the idea of then BPI-head Jon Webster and NME journalist (now eminent sociomusicologist) Simon Frith. Mercury is known for rewarding groundbreaking albums, sometimes over big commercial hits, and its results are sometimes controversial (although many of the haters tends to work from the benefit of hindsight!).
We start in 1992 with Primal Scream, whose album Screamadelica beat out U2 and The Jesus and Mary Chain in the Mercury Prize’s first year. We’ll be playing “Movin’ On Up”, a gospel-infused track with slick production from Jimmy Miller of Rolling Stones fame. Despite so many people at the time excitedly, talking about this track as the crossover between acid house and rock, to me it owes most of its production DNA to Sympathy For The Devil, which was also produced by Miller.
Portishead‘s 1995 debut album Dummy was groundbreaking at the time, and on reviewing it for the show, I have to say it’s still sounds as awesome today as it did back then. The track to choose is of course “Sour Times”, which is still really their signature song. That bone-tingling sample is Lalo Schifrin – from the Mission Impossible (60s TV show) soundtrack.
Not only is PJ Harvey the first solo woman artist to win the Mercury (Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, 2001) – she’s also the only person ever to win the Prize twice (also in 2011 with Let England Shake). I’ve chosen “Good Fortune”, an unusually upbeat track – in fact, I note that the higher-streaming tracks on her Spotify page are mostly the more cheerful ones (although to be fair her most streamed track Down By The Water is probably about drowning children).
Elbow took over the country (and Glastonbury) in 2008 with their fourth release The Seldom Seen Kid, and despite the album containing many gems, we kinda have to play the big anthem “One Day Like This” (see also 2012 Olympics). I love the way that the outro “Throw those curtains wide… one day like this a year will see me right” soundsa. bit like Hey Jude’s “Na Na Na” outro – and has the equivalent chords (F-Eb-Bb-F). You can duet them in real time – try it!
Also featured in the show is “Breezeblocks” from Alt-J‘s debut An Awesome Wave, and Michael Kiwanuka’s “Hero”, from his self-titled album Kiwanuka, which earned him a long-awaited Mercury win. Here’s his best-known track Cold Little Heart, as it appeared in the Big Little Lies TV show opening sequence:
For 2024, the winners are Leeds-based art-rock band English Teacher. I’ve chosen a personal favourite here – the chord-loop ballad “You Blister My Paint”. Apart from the unusual subject matter of a toxic relationship (although see also Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Heart, P!nk and many others), it’s perhaps the most traditional of the songs on the album (there’s a lot of great spoken word stuff too). And it does warm my heart when an indie band isn’t afraid to write a good melodic hook that might bring in new fans (there’s too much self-sabotage in alt-rock songwriting IMO).
Our soundslike this week is the 2013 controversy over One Direction’s Best Song Ever allegedly being influenced by The Who’s 1971 stadium banger Baba O’Reilly. We’ll play them back to back, with some digital editing to make the comparison cleaner.
For the quiz you will need to spot the song from some VERY short intros. The theme is big hits that were nominated but lost out to an eventually less successful artist. I’m calling it “Snubbed”!
As ever, the shows are all at joebennett.net/5live, with some highlights on instagram.com/joebennettmusicology.
Recent Comments