Former Belle & Sebastian member Isobel Campbell has said that she regrets comments she made indicating that she was on a 'slump' after hearing that her album with Mark Lanegan, 'Ballad Of The Broken Seas', had been nominated for the 2006 Mercury Prize, the winner of which, is, of course, set to be announced tonight.
Campbell had said in an interview with The Scotsman that she may not even attend the ceremony, had a bit of a whine about the music industry in general, and added that she was afraid that she would get caught up in hype surrounding the nomination. To be honest, she also made some pretty fair points about sexism in the music industry and how much harder it is to be a female singer/songwriter.
Anyway, now she says: "It's a shame, because when I said those things I was on a bad day, you know? And I was really tired. But really, it's [being nominated] a good thing to happen. Initially, I was really happy and excited about it. But with a lot of the London media stuff, you're getting sort of whipped into some kind of excitement. And afterwards, I just got spat out of the other end. So after being quite excited, I went home, and sat down to think about what I want as an artist and that's not it. I'm still going to go, but it's just a world that I don't necessarily feel that I belong to."
Asked if she thinks she'll get it, she said: "I can't really see that it would win, because there's a lot of big names there - but I basically just wrote that record for myself, and it's just a bonus that a lot of people like it too."
Elsewhere in pre-Mercury Music Prize chat, Muse have said they don't want to win. Kinda. It sounds like they'd like to win it, but feel that one of the less established acts would benefit more from the £20k prize. Bassist Chris Wolstenholme told MTV: "The thing that's great about the Mercurys is that it's based on how good you are rather than how many records you've sold. For the past few years it's been smaller acts who've taken the prize so maybe it's time a well-known name did it again. Although saying that, you do win a cash prize so even though we'd love to get it, maybe it's fairer if it does go to a smaller act - we don't need the cash that badly right now."