Canadian singer Anne Murray has questioned the integrity of her home country's big awards bash - the Juno Awards - after she was originally left off the shortlist for Best Album by mistake.
The nominations for the Best Album prize are based on sales figures, and an error made by awards organisers in adding up the sales stats for last year meant that Murray missed out on a shortlisting even though she had one of the top five best selling albums of 2007. The mistake has been rectified and Murray is now a contender for the prize, though she is competing against five other albums not four, because awards bosses haven't admitted which of the other nominees shouldn't have been on the list.
It's not the first time the Juno Best Album shortlist has been bungled. In 2004 Nickelback's 'The Long Road' was made a sixth nominee for the prize after a similar maths mistake had deprived them of a nomination that should have been theirs. Juno bosses admitted that the Murray mistake came to their attention after her label - EMI - questioned why she wasn't on the shortlist when their sales stats suggested she should be. To that end awards bosses have said that in the future they will share nomination lists with label reps ahead of their release in case there are any errors that label people might spot.
Speaking about the fact that a sixth nominee has been let through because of the maths mistake, Murray told reporters this week: "The person who is not supposed to be in there [the shortlist] could conceivably win. It was strange because I knew what my [sales] numbers were and I saw some of the other numbers and I thought, 'Well, how did they figure that?' Because it is strictly numbers with the album of the year, and so I was surprised. You wonder how seriously they take it, the counting and all of that".
Juno spokesman Stephen Stohn told reporters: "Next year this type of discussion, rather than happening after the nominations are announced, will happen with a very closed and very confidential group of people who are in the know, to just look and say, 'Listen, does this all make sense? Does this jive with what we know?'".
The Juno Awards take place on 6 Apr in Calgary.