So bint announces; actually it's James Blake who nobody's heard (or heard of)... must check him out. Is it just me or does the Mercury mean absolutely nothing these days?

Actually, I think the Mercury Prize means a lot. But could mean so much more. All of the short list sell well off the back of the exposure - the more obscure do extremely well. But the whole thing needs a few tweaks.
1. Return it back to the summer, so it doesn’t have to compete with all the Q4 activity.
2. Explain its remit
3. Return it to BBC with a respected host
As usual it’s had a lot of press this week, and as we all know, all publicity is good publicity.

The flaw for me is in the basic concept. Albums were started by the music INDUSTRY - and I emphasise the word - to profit from the sales and publicity around a single. Usually the collection consisted of one hit and 11 pieces of shit.

Leaving aside the obvious (classical concertos, concept albums, hit collections) they have remained so; allowing the artistes to put out second rate tracks instead of having to improve them.

Surely PSY, with his clever (if derivative and, for me, ghastly Gangnam Style), was a far more worthy ARTISTE than James Blake? Like it or not, it captivated millions instead of hundreds.

The entire silly concept than one is "better" than the other is time wasting bollocks, of course. PSY is better at what he does; Blake is better at what he does.

I think I'm better (at what I do) than many more highly respected artistes. The Ooga Chagga in Hooked On A Feeling, the words of When Caravaggio met MichelAngelo, the sound of Satisfaction - genius in their field (not Rachmaninoff though).

JK2006 wrote:
So bint announces; actually it's James Blake who nobody's heard (or heard of)... must check him out. Is it just me or does the Mercury mean absolutely nothing these days?

mercury prize

Looking at the footage, Lauren Laverne quite clearly says James Blake and not James Blunt.

Actually her slip up was earlier in the show. Here we go, you see, a bit of blurring the truth for a better story! Sorry.