20 Years of the Mercury Prize - Winners Poll

2005: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
2006: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2007: The Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
2008: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

Feel my eyes glazing over completely at this run.

Dummy, easy.

Some good and great albums on this list, but this is a grueling sequence:

1998: Gomez - Bring It On
1999: Talvin Singh - OK
2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Not a huge fan of any of these really. Many of them are albums I feel I'm "supposed" to revere, partly due to their canonisation. If I had to go for one it'd have to be Screamadelica or perhaps Different Class.

Dummy, by quite some distance.

Duh Dummy.

and Screamadelica is their worst album.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 6:35 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest

u crazy

assuming alfred's never heard Sonic Flower Groove for a start

A whole lot of mediocrity on here barring PJ and Portishead. Thats what happens when you get commitees. Badly Drawn Boy is better than The Unutterable Fall? And thats just one example.

yikes

Screamadelica - yeah okay can't front still got a lot of goodness but it's the producers' record and it's probably half an hour too long at least
Suede - yeah okay can't front some good maudlin mopery but it wd make a good EP maybe
Elegant Slumming - just goes heavy hit after heavy hit plus the outrage is still hilarious 18 years on
Dummy - can't front still pretty classic fucked if i ever want to listen to it tho which is a poor showing for a drunky blues record in our house
Different Class - i'm mad fond of "Something Changed", the rest is yeah well it was a different time wannit?
New Forms - this is still fucking A in most respects
Bring It On - Captain Quornheart
OK - this is a perfectly dece record as long as you never have to hear a BBC journo talk about it
The Hour of Bewilderbeast - should've been The 20 Minutes of Bewilderbeast amirite?
Stories from the City - me and PJ only really hit off on the occasional track tbh

I'm going to listen to the whole lot before voting. A minority view, I'm sure, but I liked that Gomez album a lot at the time. Also, people round here have been far too dismissive of the Arctic Monkeys debut. Can't imagine that Badly Drawn Boy has worn too well, and subsequent releases have dented my love of the Antony & the Johnsons. Have avoided the Portishead debut for years, due to over-playing at the time, and Franz Ferdinand's initial appeal quickly palled. Need to re-assess the Roni Size - suspect it might hold up well. In my refractory period with the xx - still feels too soon to revisit.

1992: Primal Scream - Screamadelica

SHITE

1993: Suede - Suede

SHITE

1994: M People - Elegant Slumming

this is okay

1995: Portishead - Dummy

AMAZING

1996: Pulp - Different Class

SHITE

1997: Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms

okay i guess

1998: Gomez - Bring It On

BEYOND SHITE

1999: Talvin Singh - OK

GIVE A FUCK

2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

FUCKING TWENTY PENCE BUSKER, FUCKING DIE

2001: P J Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

GODDESS REWARDED FOR SLUMMING IT, PROOF OF MERCURY PANEL'S SHITE TASTE

2002: Ms. Dynamite - A Little Deeper

LOVE, WILL ALWAYS DEFEND

2003: Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner

FLUKE AMAZING WINNER

2004: Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

BEYOND SHITE

2005: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

NEARLY LISTENABLE BUT...NOT QUITE

2006: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

BEYOND BEYOND SHITE

2007: The Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future

LOLLLLLLLLL (AT EVERYONE WHO LIKED THIS)

2008: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

COMPLETELY BAFFLING, ALSO SHITE

2009: Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy

BLESS YOU

2010: the xx - XX

AMAZING

2011: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

AMAZING

A Little Deeper - ironic title
Boy in Da Corner - ok this is still unfuckwithable
Franz Ferdinand - family connection precludes me honestly assessing this, still think half of it bangs
I Am a Bird Now - love the dude, fuck all y'all
Whatever People Blah Blah Blah - wasn't going to student discos by this stage in life jeezus i hate that one that goes "what a shabby man" u smug twats
Myths of the Near Future - step away from the Grace record you cunts
Elbow - not unpleasant when they're mumbling
Speech Debelle - can't front never heard it, will side with anything that turd Corden doesn't like
XX - like Dummy except i couldn't be arsed in the first place
Let England Shake - it's 2011, i've got a lot on my plate, let's just leave it eh?

if i was asked for the worst in this lot, i would say pulp, and if asked for the best, i would say ms dynamite

both on principle

god pulp really are the fucking worst band ever though. i literally want to punch jarvis DICKHEAD cocker in the face

and Screamadelica is their worst album.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 6:35 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest

u crazy

yeah I don't really get where Alfred's coming from on this one. I mean they have some TERRIBLE records

i didn't know antony was a britishes!

voted dummy

Has to be between the first two. Going for "Suede" in the long run, just ahead of "Screamadelica". Otherwise, Elbow, Pulp and Franz Ferdinand are the best efforts here.

It looks like I'm the only one voting for the one I'm voting for.

Speech who?

Probably should have said "Vanishing Point is a more deserving winner," but we can make these claims about a lot of these artists' catalogues.

I love Elegant Slumming, Different Class and Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

went with Elegant Slumming

pulp or dizzee. don't know if i've heard any of these in full since franz f.

Such a zeitgeisty collection of records
like, "what was your favourite age?"

I rep for Hour of the Bewilderbeast, but I won't vote for it.

I love a thread where ILX can amusingly trash a load of shit so-called experts used to adore. More please.

1-dizzee
2-arctics
3-portis

Probably should have said "Vanishing Point is a more deserving winner," but we can make these claims about a lot of these artists' catalogues.

We could have, and "Vanishing Point" is also an excellent album, but outside "contrarian" ILM, "Screamadelica" is generally considered to be their masterpiece, among critics and indie audiences alike.

god pulp really are the fucking worst band ever though. i literally want to punch jarvis DICKHEAD cocker in the face

― lex pretend, Thursday, 8 September 2011 00:22 (9 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, worse than hitler

there was a band called hitler, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwsWGLLub30

This is what I found...

Its no good taking the piss out of Michael Jackson when your legacy is a load of landfill brit-pop shite and a decades worth of Peel session debris. Pulp were truly dreadful, just pumped up chancers who got lucky. The fifth form doggerel of JC on Common People is the apex of absolute shiteness. The Auteurs had already nailed it with The Upper Classes. Looking at this Mercury list makes me feel queasy and angry at how its nearly always the tossers that win in life.

winning the mercury prize |= winning in life

Hey, Luke Haines, welcome to ILM! (xp)

Talentless chancers, yeah! Coming round here, punching our peados - who do they think they are? All those singles were rubbish weren't they? Disco 2000, Es & Whizz, Common People, Do You Remember the First Time, Babies - who likes those? A: No one! We only bought them to throw in the bin.

2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

FUCKING TWENTY PENCE BUSKER, FUCKING DIE

You've just reminded me of that viz cartoon, in which Badly Drawn Boy is desperately busking outside Natwest, and the caption below is "Badly Overdrawn Boy".

My favourite Viz strip was "Vidal Baboon"

Luke Haines otm

The Auteurs had already nailed it with The Upper Classes.

Did Luke Haines have a strand of uncertainty with regard his position in the social strata in the lyrics? Or was it pure invective?

I mean, I also wrote a version of a similar scenario, way back in the day. It was called "Lichtenstein". It wasn't great, but.

I voted for Different Class, by the way, risking the opprobrium of various people on here.

xxxpost Vidal Baboon LOL

i gots no problem with people repping for pedestrian indie as long as they don't mind a little banter in return

god pulp really are the fucking worst band ever though. i literally want to punch jarvis DICKHEAD cocker in the face

so otm

mum emailed me to tell me "dj harvey that dj you and your father like won the mercury music prize" haha

i gots no problem with people repping for pedestrian indie as long as they don't mind a little banter in return

if that's where you're setting the bar i'm not sure what in the way of indie wouldn't fall under it.

indie music is just the worst.

Yeah, that King Creosote, for one

it's just rubbish innit? just blokes meowling in stupid accents about how the quality of the rain was better in the '60s.

xxxxp preferred him when he played for AFC Wimbledon.

There is a long history of dance music that uses jazz (and soul and funk and reggae and hip hop and etc.) samples though, and the point of this by and large is not to make the music more palatable to non-dance listeners, but to generate friction between the sample source and the groove.

Some idiot critics and listeners might seize on that in the wrong way (as per your quote) but it's pretty clear that this is not what Roni Size was doing. I'd say the first Goldie album (which I like too) is a much more appropriate target of that criticism.

We wouldn't complain about, say, Moodymann in these terms - mainly because he's never crossed over as much. But this is why working backwards from outcome (winning the mercury music prize) to intention is so fraught.

Sampling sources from other styles doesn't compare you to those styles necessarily. If I were to make a juke track that sampled Jacques Brel, Chicago bass wouldn't be the new chanson. But I get your point - I was put off New Forms because of how drum'n'bass was then being pedalled, mostly by pundits and journos and bandwagonjumpers rather than the artists themselves. So yeah, it is unfair to pass judgement in that way. I guess in some ways it's easy to get put off by external media rather than the message itself. Electro was a great laugh until Topman changed their whole line to day-glo pink and yellow and then it just started getting a bit sickening. As a peripheral listener, the younger me would have been more influenced and subsequently put-off by such, as you say, idiotic quotes.

y'all the Speech Debelle album is great, I think many of you are overly harsh re: the Tracy Chapmanisms because IMO they work

Not sure Roni Size's Reprazent tour was better than the album. I really enjoyed the album on release but walked out of the live show.

So I'm giving this another spin before a bit.

"for a bit"

Do you remember the thread started when I made ill-advised claims about Underworld's drum programming and 90s d 'n b, Tim F? I had a look for it, but couldn't find it. Thought it might be pertinent here.

xp DNB closes to rap is true, pretty much all old school dnb'ers were hip hop heads before the whole rave thing, even listen to alot of early uk dance stuff it has alot of hip hop in it(bomb the bass, depth charge etc)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

OK, so I need to make my mind up quickly on this. Interesting to revisit these in order. Some confirmed as enduring classics (Portishead), others as played-out passing pleasures (Franz Ferdinand), others as unarguable WTF-were-they-thinkings (dear God, the M People album is shockingly poor once you get past the singles), and there were a couple whose appeal was lost on me at the time, but which I can now get right behind. So, with that in mind, and to my slight amazement, I'm voting for Roni Size/Reprazent.

he M People album is shockingly GREAT once you get past the singles

Went "Dummy". A worst poll would be more interesting IMO.

That happened in 2007. M People walked it, followed by Gomez.

WORSTEST ALBUM TO WIN MERCURY MUSICS PRIZE!

i just can't with people who think pulp are better than m people

can't what?

Have Sex / a pint / dance / what?

I have had a pint with Lex so it can't be that.

Hey, me too.. and then we went to a rave, so...

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

portishead my arse.

Portisarse - Bummy

fuck this shit

I am more confused by Badly Drawn Boy coming in 5th; regardless of how I feel about them, the top 4 albums have enough recognizable support around here to make their placings a given but I thought everyone detested BDB

(ftr I think the correct album won)

I don't. (detest I mean, I also think the right album won)...

I dunno, BDB... The album is great, but he seemed to have a very steep 'run out of ideas' curve.

.. also, he seemed to have a very strong 'irritation' factor, one small thing going wrong could cause a mighty strop on-stage. That tends to upset people, and rightly so.

Every one talked about Elliot Smith being 'better', but the one CD I got of his, ummm... Nice enough, but didn't really win me over.

'Once Around The Block' is a fantastic song. At the time it made me buy BDB's album, which was a huge disappointment. Apart from that song, which to this day is great.

i love a lot of BDB songs, esp from HOTB and the about a boy soundtrack. and one or two from the next one. after that he became entirely unlistenable. some of the most grating shit i've made myself listen to.

voted xx just over dummy. similar albums in some ways - they both feel real modern. products of their times perhaps - dummy is all 90s bombast (i remember really liking "roads" at first, which quickly faded) while xx is pretty subdued and cautious. fwiw i find third and xx super super similar, and at times i wonder if third is the superior album to dummy. def still feeling my xx pick, and real surprised dummy stomped it so hard

"Bombast"? Dummy? "Bombast"?

"roads" is basically THE most melodramatic song ever

a lot of dummy is pretty chill but there are still some srsly emo lyrics there

Missed this poll, but echo 'the right album won'

the snore album snored

Aren't all these albums, by definition, overplayed though? And if that's the case, any winner could be accused of being a boring choice?

yeah exackly this is why lists, polls, awards, and shit that wins lists polls and awards sucks and is wank

I don't think anyone could accuse Speech Debelle's album of being overplayed.

Poor Speech Debelle

Speech Impediment Debelle

When she won, did peopl eyell out "Speech! Speech! Speech! " ?

That would explain her length of award acceptance.

Speech Débile

@campbellclaret
Alastair Campbell
met Speech Debelle at a Labour/arts do last night. Really nice, and she didn't laugh when I showed her the song I wrote about Elvis
5 minutes ago via web

Never before have I seen so much irrelevence in one tweet.

would love to hear that tbh

He later had a discussion about Avatar and vuvuzelas with Hull City manager Phil Brown.

See, i have no idea if you're joking about that or not