FEATURE: “And the Award Goes To…” The Best Mercury Prize-Winning Albums

FEATURE:

 

“And the Award Goes To…”

IN THIS PHOTO: Wolf Alice won last year’s Mercury Prize for their album, Visions of a Life/PHOTO CREDIT: Wolf Alice 

The Best Mercury Prize-Winning Albums

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THE shortlist for this year’s Mercury Prize

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 IN THIS PHOTO: Dave is expected to make this year’s shortlist with his debut album, PSYCHODRAMA/PHOTO CREDIT: Lily Bertrand-Webb

happens on Thursday (25th July) and many are predicting their shortlists. I have already made my suggestions and I feel that there will be the odd surprise in the pack. I expect big Pop acts like The 1975 to get nominated and it would be shocking were IDLES to miss out – I have actually tipped them to win this year for 2018’s Joy as an Act of Resistance. I do feel like it is hard to get a good handle on what will be nominated because each judging panel has their own views and tastes. There are odds out there and it seems like some of the names I tipped are included – Dave and Slowthai are riding high in the pack and it seems like Self Esteem is worth a shot; I would be very surprised if Rebecca Taylor’s moniker was not included. After Wolf Alice won last year’s award for Visions of a Life, many people are wondering which album will win this year. I have been looking back at the Mercury Prize’s history and the albums that have won the illustrious prize – from 1992’s introduction to last year, it has been a fantastic and unpredictable ride. PJ Harvey is the only artist to have won twice whilst Radiohead have been nominated five times and never won; M People caused an upset in 1994 with their album, Elegant Slumming, and every year seems to throw up these surprises and shocks. I shall react to the Mercury nominations on Thursday but, for now, I am dipping back into the archives and collating, in chronological order, the best Mercury-winning albums. Everyone will have their own opinions but, to me, these are the finest-ever…

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IN THIS PHOTO: Jorja Smith was nominated for a Mercury last year for her debut labium, Lost & Found/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

MERCURY Prize-winning albums.

ALL ALBUM COVERS: Getty Images

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Primal ScreamScreamadelica

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Winning Year: 1992

Release Date: 23rd September, 1991

Labels: Creation/Sire

Producers: Andrew Weatherall/Hugo Nicolson/The Orb/Hypnotone/Jimmy Miller

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: The Jesus and Mary Chain – Honey's Dead and U2 – Achtung Baby

Standout Tracks: Moving’ On Up/Higher Than the Sun/Come Together

Key Cut: Loaded

Review:

This is such a brilliant, gutsy innovative record, so unlike anything the Scream did before, that it's little wonder that there's been much debate behind who is actually responsible for its grooves, especially since Andrew Weatherall is credited with production with eight of the tracks, and it's clearly in line with his work. Even if Primal Scream took credit for Weatherall's endeavors, that doesn't erase the fact that they shepherded this album, providing the ideas and impetus for this dubtastic, elastic, psychedelic exercise in deep house and neo-psychedelic. Like any dance music, this is tied to its era to a certain extent, but it transcends it due to its fierce imagination and how it doubles back on rock history, making the past present and vice versa. It was such a monumental step forward that Primal Screamstumbled before regaining their footing, but by that point, the innovations of Screamadelica had been absorbed by everyone from the underground to mainstream. There's little chance that this record will be as revolutionary to first-time listeners, but after its initial spin, the genius in its construction will become apparent -- and it's that attention to detail that makes Screamadelica an album that transcends its time and influence” – AllMusic

PortisheadDummy

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Winning Year: 1995

Release Date: 22nd August, 1994

Labels: Go Beat!/London

Producers: Portishead

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love and Oasis – Definitely Maybe

Standout Tracks: Mysterons/Sour Times/Numb

Key Cut: Glory Box

Review:

It’s possible to hear in Dummy a collection of gratifyingly sad-but-sexy gestures, and plenty of Portishead’s followers—Lamb, Morcheeba, Olive, Alpha, Mono, Hooverphonic, Sneaker Pimps, and dozens of other acts forever lost to the cut-out bin of history—did just that. Whole retail empires flourished and collapsed while Portishead and their ilk were piped through the in-store speakers. Is Dummy stylish? Of course it is; you don’t evoke ’60s spy flicks without some deep-seated feelings about aesthetics, panache, the proper cut of a suit. But style, stylishness, is only the beginning. None of Portishead’s imitators understood that it’s not the blue notes or the mood lighting that make it tick—it’s the pockets of emptiness inside. Like Barrow once said, it’s the air” – Pitchfork

PulpDifferent Class

Winning Year: 1996

Release Date: 30th October, 1995

Label: Island

Producer: Chris Thomas

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Manic Street Preachers – Everything Must Go and Oasis – (What's the Story) Morning Glory?

Standout Tracks: Mis-Shapes/Disco 2000/Sorted for E's & Wizz

Key Cut: Common People

Review:

At first, it appears to be a memoir of the tense and skint years, plotting and honing some kind of spangly pop masterplan to perfection; Pulp, as so many glowing features have told us, have been wannabe stars in the indie chart relegation zone since round about the Battle Of Balaclava. But then it all swings open and reveals itself to be much less glib, much more insidious and vindictive and so, so precise. "I've been sleeping with your wife for the past 16 weeks," Cocker gloats, Smoking your cigarettes/Drinking your brandy/Messing up the bed that you chose together". Simple revenge on some Year in Provence-toting prick isn't enough. When you've been wronged as deeply and consistently as Cocker, only a connoisseur's savouring of the invasion of someone else's privacy - a euphoria of humiliations - will do” – NME

GomezBring It On

Winning Year: 1998

Release Date: 13th April, 1998

Label: Hut (Virgin)

Producers: Gomez

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Massive Attack – Mezzanine and Pulp – This Is Hardcore

Standout Tracks: Tijuana Lady/Get Myself Arrested/The Comeback

Key Cut: Whippin’ Piccadilly

Review:

This much-hyped Brit fivesome would be more at home trading licks with John Popper on the H.O.R.D.E. tour than sharing a stage with Tricky, Fatboy Slim, or others of the English leading edge. While their retro pastiche of swampy guitar, Vedderesque vocals, and goofy lyrics is initially bewildering, Bring It On slowly grows into sonic shapes that are as dense and oddly beautiful as wild kudzu” – Entertainment Weekly

PJ Harvey Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

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Winning Year: 2001

Release Date: 23rd October, 2000

Label: Island

Producers: Rob Ellis/Mick Harvey/PJ Harvey

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain and Zero 7 – Simple Things

Standout Tracks: Beautiful Feeling/This Mess We're In/This Is Love

Key Cut: Good Fortune

Review:

On the album's best tracks, such as "Kamikaze" and "This Is Love," a sexy, shouty blues-punk number that features the memorable refrain "I can't believe life is so complex/When I just want to sit here and watch you undress," Harvey sounds sensual and revitalized. The New York influences surface on the glamorous punk rock of "Big Exit" and "Good Fortune," on which Harvey channels both Chrissie Hynde's sexy tough girl and Patti Smith's ferocious yelp. Ballads like the sweetly urgent, piano and marimba-driven "One Line" and the Thom Yorke duet "This Mess We're In" avoid the painful depths of Harvey's darkest songs; "Horses in My Dreams" also reflects Harvey's new emotional balance: "I have pulled myself clear," she sighs, and we believe her. However, "We Float"'s glossy choruses veer close to Lillith Fair territory, and longtime fans can't help but miss the visceral impact of her early work, but Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea doesn't compromise her essential passion. Hopefully, this album's happier, more direct PJ Harvey is a persona she'll keep around for a while” – AllMusic

Dizzee RascalBoy in da Corner

Winning Year: 2003

Release Date: 21st July, 2003

Label: XL

Producers: Dizzee Rascal/Chubby Dread/Moulders/Mr. Cage/Taz/Vanguard

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Martina Topley-Bird – Quixotic and Radiohead – Hail to the Thief

Standout Tracks: I Luv U/Jus’ a Rascal/Do It!

Key Cut: Fix Up, Look Sharp

Review:

“…Presumably, they haven't heard Boy in da Corner, which appears to borrow from nothing other than the terrifying sound inside Mills's head. Disjointed electronic pulses pass for rhythms. Above them lurch churning bass frequencies, disturbing choruses of muttering voices, clattering synthesisers that recall police sirens and arcade games, and, on forthcoming single Fix Up Look Sharp, bursts of rock guitar. In contrast to the macho swagger of most garage MCs, Mills delivers his rhymes in a frantic, panicked yelp. The overall effect is shocking and unsettling in the extreme.

Shocking and unsettling people may be the point. The lyrics of Boy in da Corner deal with teenage life on an east London council estate, a world of "blanks, skanks and street robbery... pregnant girls who ain't got no love, useless mans with no plans". There is much talk of stabbing and shooting - "We used to fight with kids from the other estates," says Mills on Brand New Day, "now eight millimetres settle debates" - and a distinctly queasy humour on display. I Luv U tackles the subject of underage sex with mordant wit: "Pregnant? What you talking about that for? 15? She's underage, that's raw” – The Guardian

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

Winning Year: 2006

Release Date: 23rd January, 2006

Label: Domino

Producer: Jim Abbiss

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Richard Hawley – Coles Corner and Muse – Black Holes & Revelations

Standout Tracks: The View from the Afternoon/Fake Tales of San Francisco/When the Sun Goes Down

Key Cut: I Bet You Look Good on the Danccefloor

Review:

The knock-out punch is saved for the finale, though. And when it comes, it smacks you three times. Just to make sure, like. ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ is the sound of the streets long after the Ritzy has kicked out for the night, ‘From The Ritz To The Rubble’ is a three-minute blast that dares to take on that most grotesque of creatures (nightclub bouncers, not Kerry Katona). The clincher, though, is ‘A Certain Romance’. As perfect a pop song as you could ever hope to hear, it rivals even The Streets in its portrayal of small-town England, a place where “there’s only music so that there’s new ringtones”. Alex’s message is compact yet delivered with dazzling poetic flair: “All of that’s what the point is not/The point’s that there ain’t no romance around here”.

By the time it finishes, you don’t feel sorry for Arctic Monkeys any more. They might have been swamped in more hype than Shayne Ward ballroom-dancing across the set of I’m A Celebrity… but all of that’s what the point is not. The point’s that there ain’t no disappointment around here” – NME

ElbowThe Seldom Seen Kid

Winning Year: 2008

Release Date: 17th March, 2008

Labels: Fiction/Polydor/Geffen

Producers: Craig Potter/Elbow

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Laura Marling – Alas, I Cannot Swim and Radiohead – In Rainbows

Standout Tracks: Starlings/The Fix/One Day Like This

Key Cut: Grounds for Divorce

Review:

"I'm asking you to back a horse that's good for glue," sings Guy Garvey on "Starlings", the opening track of Elbow's fourth album – though on the evidence here, this band is far from ready for the knacker's yard.

Admittedly, it's a ponderous opening, with Garvey's intimate vocal punctuated by blasts of blaring synthetic horns; but "The Bones of You" and "Grounds for Divorce" allay fears, the former a lilting indie waltz, the latter resembling a modern chain-gang chant. The diversity expands with the subdued brass-band hook of "Weather To Fly" and the uncategorisable "An Audience with the Pope", with its quixotic jangle of zither or dulcimer.

"The Fix" employs suitably furtive organ while Garvey and Richard Hawley wield racing-fraud imagery ("Too many times we've been posterly pipped/ We've loaded the saddles, the mickeys are slipped"), before "One Day Like This" concludes things with a celebration of life's small mercies: "Throw those curtains wide/ One day like this a year will see me right". An absorbing, life-affirming set” – The Independent

PJ Harvey Let England Shake

Winning Year: 2011

Release Date: 14 February, 2011

Labels: Island/Vagrant

Producers: Flood/Mick Harvey/John Parish/PJ Harvey

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Adele – 21 and Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi

Standout Tracks: Let England Shake/The Words That Maketh Murder/On Battleship Hill

Key Cut: This Glorious Land

Review:

Her musical allusions are just as fascinating and pointed: the title track sets seemingly cavalier lyrics like “Let’s head out to the fountain of death and splash about” to a xylophone melody borrowed from the Four Lads’ “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” a mischievous echo of the questions of national identity Harvey sets forth in the rest of the album (that she debuted the song by performing it on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show for then-Prime Minster Gordon Brown just adds to its mischief). “The Words That Maketh Murder” culminates its grisly playground/battleground chant with a nod to Eddie Cochran's anthem for disenfranchised ‘50s teens “Summertime Blues,” while “Written on the Forehead” samples Niney's “Blood and Fire” to equally sorrowful and joyful effect. As conceptually and contextually bold as Let England Shake is, it features some of Harvey's softest-sounding music. She continues to sing in the upper register that made White Chalk so divisive for her fans, but it’s tempered by airy production and eclectic arrangements -- fittingly for such a martial album, brass is a major motif -- that sometimes disguise how angry and mournful many of these songs are. “The Last Living Rose” recalls Harvey's Dry-era sound in its simplicity and finds weary beauty even in her homeland’s “grey, damp filthiness of ages,” but on “England,” she wails, “You leave a taste/A bitter one.” In its own way, Let England Shake may be even more singular and unsettling than White Chalk was, and its complexities make it one of Harvey’s most cleverly crafted works” – AllMusic

James Blake Overgrown

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Winning Year: 2013

Release Date: 5th April, 2013

Labels: ATLAS/A&M/Polydor

Producer: James Blake

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: David Bowie – The Next Day and Laura Marling – Once I Was an Eagle

Standout Tracks: Overgrown/Take a Fall for Me/Digital Lion

Key Cut: Retrograde

Review:

James Blake’s uniqueness has much to do with the middle path he walks between folk and pop. His penchant for straightforward crooning (at full force when he covers, say, Joni Mitchell) lends itself to a narrative style. But he dabbles equally in other pop forms and emotional collage. “Life Around Here” nods directly at Timbaland, with a beat that sounds like it could have come out of a basement in New York circa 1994, Blake plucking sensory tidbits from the ether and patching them together. Hip-hop rears its head, too, with the RZA-assisted “Take A Fall For Me” sticking out as the most straightforward and naked lyricism on the album by a stretch. James Blake’s talent is in his ability to smoothly synthesize disparate influences; his willingness to grow and develop while doing so is fascinating and frequently rapturous” – The A.V. Club

Sampha Process

Winning Year: 2017

Release Date: 3rd February, 2017

Label: Young Turks

Producers: Rodaidh McDonald/Sampha

Biggest Mercury Challengers That Year: Loyle Carner – Yesterday's Gone and Stormzy – Gang Signs & Prayer

Standout Tracks: (No One Knows Me) Like the Piano/Timmy's Prayer/Incomplete Kisses

Key Cut: Blood on Me

Review:

Sampha's vocals can be an acquired taste, but they're instantly identifiable and heartfelt. They're all the more compelling when detailing interpersonal ruptures, drawing imagery like "I took the shape of a letter, slipped myself underneath your door," or in a state of agitation, "gasping for air." The album reaches its most stirring point in "Kora Sings," built on an alternately serene and jittery production, over which Sampha sings to his dying mother, trailing off after "You don't know how strong you are." None of it is particularly light. Sampha's exquisite melodies and detailed productions nonetheless make all the references to longing, disturbed sleep, injurious heat, and shattered glass go down easy. "Reverse Faults," sparkling low-profile trap with a dizzying combination of smeared glints and jutting background vocals, might be the best display of Sampha's skill set. Another marvel is the hurtling, breakbeat-propelled "Blood on Me," its last 40 seconds juiced with some of the nastiest synthesized bass since Alexander O'Neal's "Fake." In a way, this all makes the previous output seem merely preliminary” – AllMusic