Awards

Mercury Prize 2013 nominations announced

By | Published on Wednesday 11 September 2013

Mercury Prize

The shortlist for the 2013 Mercury Prize has been announced by Lauren Laverne over at the Hospital Club in London’s Covent Garden. The overall winner will be announced at a ceremony at The Roundhouse in London on 30 Oct.

Chair of the judging panel Simon Frith said of this year’s twelve nominees: “This year’s Barclaycard Mercury Prize shortlist celebrates a fascinating year for British and Irish music, marked by a wonderful range of musical voices – urgent, reflective, upbeat and tender, acoustic and electronic, and all with something intriguing to say”.

Though interestingly, this year the folk and jazz genres have lost their token status and been shunned completely. Welcome to metal’s world – bearded music fans unite.

David Bowie and Arctic Monkeys are currently joint favourites to win at 4/1, according to William Hill – Bowie having been the lone favourite prior to the shortlist announcement. Jon Hopkins, Savages and Villagers all come bottom of the betting rankings at 10/1, which is a surprise because we reckon Savages at the very least are in with a good shot.

William Hill spokesperson Rupert Adams told CMU: “Bowie was back with a bang earlier this year and he was always going to be towards the top of the betting but with a wide variety of artists on the shortlist it is by no means his title”.

As is customary, the Popjustice Twenty Quiz Music Prize shortlist was also announced last night. ‘DNA’ by Little Mix gets our vote. Full nominations here.

And the artists and their albums nominated for the Mercury are:

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

See how this compares with the list of 20 contenders we published last week.



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