FEATURE:
My Pick for the Mercury Prize
PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
___________
ON Thursday (24th)…
IN THIS PHOTO: Laura Marling/PHOTO CREDIT: Lorne Thomson/Redferns
the winner of this year’s Mercury Prize will be announced. The event is very different to previous years, and there will not be the usual series of performances at a venue and all the nominees being in the same space. I will speak about that in a minute but, when the shortlist was announced in July, the fact the list of twelve contained more female artists than ever was a much-needed step forward – and more Pop albums coming into the mix. The BBC explain more:
“For the first time in its 29-year history, female artists and female-fronted bands have outnumbered men on the shortlist for the Mercury Prize.
Among the nominees for album of the year are Charli XCX's lockdown project How I'm Feeling Now and Dua Lipa's pop opus Future Nostalgia.
"I never really thought this would ever happen to me," said Lipa. "Maybe I just didn't think I was cool enough."
The nominees were announced live on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show.
A total of seven female or female-fronted acts made the 2020 shortlist. The previous highest total was five.
In contrast to last year's list, which highlighted political lyrics and post-Brexit punk, this year's selection champions pop - a genre the Prize has tended to ignore since the 1990s, when acts like Take That and the Spice GIrls received nominations.
Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia and Georgia's Seeking Thrills are both exuberant hymns to hedonism, while Charli XCX brings cutting-edge production techniques to her pop melodies, on an album recorded in six weeks at the start of the lockdown.
IN THIS PHOTO: Stormzy/PHOTO CREDIT: Ana Cuba for The New York Times
UK rap continues to have a strong presence on the list, with returning nominees Stormzy and Kano hoping to replicate the success of last year's winner, Dave.
Their albums both address the experiences and prejudices facing young Black Britons, a topic which also informs Moses Boyd's freewheeling jazz record, Dark Matter.
And a few Mercury favourites also make an appearance: Laura Marling racks up her fourth nomination for the elegant, melodic Song For Our Daughter; while Michael Kiwanuka becomes part of an elite group who've been nominated for each of their first three albums - the others being Coldplay and Anna Calvi”.
It is going to be odd seeing the Mercury Prize in a different way! This year’s event will be a hotly-contested one but, as NME reported, the way the winner is announced has a different flavour:
“Instead, this year’s Mercury Prize winner will be announced live on The One Show on September 24. The programme will also feature the first interview with the winning artist.
The BBC’s Mercury Prize coverage will begin before that on September 21, when Tom Ravenscroft will begin filling in for Marc Riley on Radio 6 Music.
Across the week, he will share previously recorded performances from the shortlisted artists. The series will kick off with a BBC Prom, performed by Laura Marling and 12 Ensemble, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall last night (September 6).
6 Music’s Album Of The Day slot will also highlight previous winners of the Mercury Prize, including Young Fathers, Roni Size and PJ Harvey.
In a press release, Lorna Clarke, Controller, BBC Pop, said: “The 2020 Mercury Prize is a great moment for us to give a platform to twelve of the most exciting acts in British music. As the annual awards show is unable to take place this year, the BBC will be celebrating these incredible acts across the week on TV, radio and online, including an exclusive announcement of the winner on The One Show on BBC One and a Later with Jools Holland special on BBC Two”.
It is brilliant that women are being acknowledged and represented on the Mercury shortlist this year, and I think albums from Dua Lipa (Future Nostalgia), and Laura Marling (Song for Our Daughter) are among the very best of this year. My second choice for Mercury winner is Laura Marling, but I think that the prize this year will go to Michael Kiwanuka for his staggering third album, KIWANUKA. I remember hearing Kiwanuka’s debut album, Home Again, and being impressed, but I think even he would admit that it was a promising debut, but maybe not as original and representative of who he is as an artist as an album like KIWANUKA. His second album, Love & Hate of 2016, was a big step forward, and he has hit a peak with last year’s KIWANUKA.
The reviews for the album have been sensational, and I think that Kiwanuka can grow even stronger and more amazing on his fourth album – which would be a scary and tantalising thought! This is what The Guardian wrote when they reviewed the album in November:
“Michael Kiwanuka’s first two albums established him as a folksy symphonic soul man akin to Bill Withers and Terry Callier, and set the bar pretty high. This one knocks it skyward. Together with producer-to-the-stars Danger Mouse and London hip-hop producer Inflo, the British-Ugandan 32-year-old has broadened his territory to stretch from Donny Hathaway-style melancholy soul through to Rolling Stones-y gospel rock, psychedelic soul and breakbeat. There are strings and harps, samples of civil rights campaigners, Hendrix-type frazzled guitars and Burt Bacharach-type orchestrations. The dreamlike, revelatory quality is reminiscent of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Primal Scream’s Screamadelica.
Unusually, in these streaming-led times, Kiwanuka is a contemplative song cycle intended to be listened to in one extended sitting, which he says is “a reaction against this fast-paced, throwaway, machine-led world”. It sounds timeless and contemporary; the instrumental interludes and the stylistic and tempo shifts all hang together because of his warm, sincere vocals and fantastic songwriting. At the core is Kiwanuka’s inner battle between anxiety, self-doubt, spirituality and wisdom, which is then set against racism and rueful glances at the state of the world. Thus, killer opener You Ain’t the Problem is both an encouraging nudge to himself and a sharp put-down of attitudes towards immigration: “If you don’t belong, you’re not the problem.”
Hero compares the murder of 60s activist Fred Hampton with recent US police shootings (“on the news again, I guess they killed another”), also referenced in the insistent Rolling (“No tears for the young, a bullet if you’re wrong”). Piano Joint (This Kind of Love) and Hard to Say Goodbye are beautifully pensive and Final Days ponders nuclear apocalypse. But for all its melancholy, Kiwanuka is never downbeat. There are moments – such as the “Time is the healer” gospel choir in I’ve Been Dazed, or hopeful closer Light – when positivity bursts through with such dazzling effect you want to cheer. Kiwanuka is a bold, expansive, heartfelt, sublime album. He’s snuck in at the final whistle, but surely this is among the decade’s best”.
I really love KIWANUKA, and I can tell how much of Michael Kiwanuka’s heart and soul is in the record! He has not won a Mercury before but, with his strongest album yet, I think that might change. As I said, Laura Marling is probably his closest competition, and Song for Our Daughter is my favourite album of 2020 – she is someone who definitely deserves all the success she gets! When Michael Kiwanuka spoke with The Line of Best Fit in October, he talked about the album’s intent – and how it differs from his previous efforts:
“It kind of came full circle on this record. When I was asked what the album was going to be called I had two options - one of them was KIWANUKA and one of them was something else. They actually loved the title straight off the bat, I changed it for a month or so as I doubted it for a bit. When I came back around everybody was like ‘oh, thank god - we way preferred KIWANUKA’. The times have changed - you can do something like that now, I don’t think you could have done something like that in 2012. I was young so it was quite confusing and like ‘ah man, what do I do?’ This whole album is more about understanding you can stand up for yourself.”
KIWANUKA employs a wider musical palate than any of its predecessors, there are more moods throughout, sometimes in the course of one song - take the sprawling standout “Hard To Say Goodbye” with its fluttering harps and choral vocals which suddenly erupts as guitar solos and strings lift the track to an ecstatic chorus. For that reason, he’s more excited than ever to perform live, a space he calls his ‘comfort zone’.
“Out of everything in this job which always throws curveballs, I always kind of rely on playing live,” he says. “The feeling of connecting with fans is amazing. It gives your songs life, you can keep singing songs you’ve sang a million times because of an audience and a good gig. Plus, I love collaborating with musicians, that’s just like my home - that’s what I know, I really enjoy it”.
There are some who have said the Mercury Prize has lost its sense of what it is about, in so much as it should provide a platform for underdog artists to get recognition and prize money. There are lesser-known artists in the shortlist this year (including Lanterns on the Lake for their album, Spook the Herd), but it is difficult to strike the balance of representing the best bands and artists and those who are underground and have created something less conventional and commercial.
This article reacted to the shortlist and asked whether the Mercury Prize has lost its way:
“The Mercury Prize should embrace its anti-establishment roots and celebrate smaller, radical artists who exist on the periphery. For example, this year’s nomination Porridge Radio stated: ‘this is the first time we’ve felt acknowledged by the wider music industry’, and it is this which should remain the essence of the Mercury Prize moving forward. They should be highlighting artists and creators who would otherwise go unnoticed or unrecognised in their talent, while dedicating themselves to spotlighting the true diversity of the British music scene. The Mercury Prize may have lost its way, but with a bit of guidance, it could easily find its way back”.
I think the Mercury Prize shortlist reflects the best albums from the past year from British and Irish acts, and it is hard to include every worth artist. I think it will be impossible to call a winner, as each year leaves you guessing until the announcement! I would like to see Michael Kiwanuka win the award, as he has created an album that has affected so many people. It is a career-best and it is one I really love. Everyone has their pick for this year’s winner but, for me, it is time to reward…
THE awesome Michael Kiwanuka.