Another rant about the Mercury Prize
The 2008 Mercury Prize shortlist came out today. Irritated and bemused by the whole thing once again, I was dimly thinking of writing a blog about it, but have just realised that a newspaper polemic I wrote on the subject last year still holds, pretty much word for word and point for point. All I need to do is swap the names on last year’s shortlist for the names on this year’s shortlist. Here we go…
WHICH of the following two albums is better? Alas I Cannot Swim by Laura Marling, or Untrue by Burial? Difficult, isn’t it? In fact it’s a bit like asking: what’s better, a hairdryer or a lawnmower? You could take a stab at answering the question, but would it actually mean anything? Both are mechanical tools, but they serve completely different purposes. The question, surely, is pointless.
But not, apparently, to the intrepid judges of the Nationwide Mercury Prize, who once again have shortlisted 12 albums released in the past year, allegedly on merit but more likely at random. Once again the choices span all genres, reflecting Britain’s “musical creativity and diversity”. Or, put another way, they’ve thrown together a list of albums that carefully and tokenistically mixes big name acts (Radiohead, Elbow, Robert Plant), because that’ll keep the prize in the media and the sponsor happy, with some leftfield choices thrown in to make the judges look clever (step forward, Laura Marling). Oh yes, and they’ve patronisingly saved room for a token jazz album that won’t win, because they never do - unless, as a political gesture, the panel decides it really has to win this year to counter mocking accusations that the jazz album never wins. And let’s not, of course, forget the obligatory ‘urban’ album (Burial) to make them look edgy.
It’s ridiculously easy to laugh at the Mercury, because it’s a ridiculous prize. It so desperately wants to be music’s Booker Prize that it’s embarrassing. But the literary equivalent of the Mercury would not be the Booker; it would be a barking-mad shortlist that included not just novels but short-story collections, teenage fiction, biographies, non-fiction, graphic novels and probably even a collection of poems tokenistically thrown in to counter accusations that the prize ignored poetry. The poetry collection, needless to say, would never win.
The Mercury’s insurmountable problem, which its panel loftily dismisses every year, is that it is simply not comparing like with like. To an extent all music prizes face this. How do the Brit Award judges decide between, say, Kate Bush and Charlotte Church in the “best female artist” category. They are worlds apart in music, age, ambitions and intentions. It’s the kind of choice that makes you question what value and meaning the prize has in the first place. The difference is that, with the Brits, it’s an occasional hazard of the job - it’s arguably far easier, for example, to choose between four guitar groups in the Best British Band category. The Mercury, though, is actually designed to create such bafflingly difficult, arguably meaningless choices, each and every year.
The Mercury is fond of claiming that it is above commerce, that it is an eclectic prize which judges on musical merit alone. ‘The Prize focuses on the music on the album – it does not take into account album sales, media exposure or live performances,’ says the press release. The dishonesty of this is breathtaking. Why did it take them so long to notice Richard Hawley then? And why were Belle and Sebastian nominated for Dear Catastrophe Waitress, for example, and not for their previous musical highpoints, If You’re Feeling Sinister or Tigermilk? It’s because, in both cases, the earlier, more obscure albums were not on the Mercury’s radar, or not fashionable enough at the time, or because Dear Catastrophe Waitress was released on a major label, meaning more influential industry people lobbying on the band’s behalf. Who knows? Whatever the reason, it had far more to do with politics than merit. Again, this is true of all awards, to an extent, but particularly true of the Mercury, since the way it is designed exacerbates the problem rather than helping to lessen it. The only unique thing about the Mercury, in this respect, is the effort it goes to to disguise the fact that commerce, label influence, media exposure etc influence its choices. Of course they bloody do. How dare they have the gall to deny it?
So what is the Nationwide Mercury Prize for, exactly? Let’s try, very hard, to say something positive. The most charitable answer is that it has something to do with trying to capture and define the “zeitgeist”, whatever that is. Chairman Simon Frith is constantly making earnest statements about what the prize “means” from year to year. (It was about “the art of the songwriter” a couple of years ago.) Except that, actually, the Mercury is comically bad at this, as has often been pointed out. At the height of Britpop, with a shortlist that included Blur’s Parklife and Pulp’s finest hour, His’n'Hers, it gave the prize to M People. In 2004 it gave it to Franz Ferdinand, at a point when they were already hugely successful and had won every other award going. Not to do with commerce? Really?
You may have gathered by now that I’m not a fan of the Nationwide Mercury Prize. I’ll tell you why. It’s not a tribute to the eclecticism of the music made in this country. It’s an insult to it. British music is far too eclectic - and there is far too much of it - to be reduced to a shortlist of 12 albums in a remotely credible way. The Mercury stinks of British colonial arrogance, insulting everything from jazz to folk and electronica by patronising the people who make it - black people in particular. You could make a reasonably strong case that the Mercury Prize is racist, in fact, although you’d possibly be undermined by the fact that the Prize is equally arrogant in its tokenistic treatment of classical music. I still wonder if Frith appreciated how pompous he sounded back in 2004, trying to explain why Thomas Adès hadn’t quite made the list when Amy Winehouse and the Streets had. ‘Fair enough,’ I can see Ades acknowledging, ‘I can’t rap for toffee.’ That said, I notice classical music hasn’t been included for a few years. Perhaps it’s easier to get away with patronising black rappers than white composers.
For me, though, the most annoying part is the way the prize insults pop music by sucking the life from it. Sober, serious, cosy, middle-aged and respectable, the Mercury makes me think of Prince Charles or the House of Lords mouthing off on an issue of the day; it feels conservative even when it is anti-establishment. In that respect, it was interesting to see the Klaxons on the list last year, one of a wave of new bands who were, at the time, opening up a much-needed generation gap in pop music (until they got co-opted by Frith and co, that is). For the first time in years, it seemed, teenagers and their parents were actually listening to different kinds of music. Your dad might nick your Franz Ferdinand CD, but he was likely to be left cold by My Chemical Romance or Enter Shikari. This is healthy. Music should divide people, or it is just background noise. If every kind of music is for everyone, then equally it is for no one.
One day soon, maybe, the Mercury will fall victim to this same generation gap. It’s an album prize, after all, and albums, in the age of the download, are declining in both sales and cultural significance. Simon Frith, it would appear, is in middle-aged denial about this. “What is most striking is the continued resilience and flexibility of the album as a way of organising music,” he said in today’s press statement. “It remains an unrivalled source of musical invention and imagination, a way of linking songs, exploring themes and developing sounds that is endlessly thrilling, surprising and worth celebration.” I actually agree with you on that, Simon (I previously wrote a blog on this very subject, in fact), possibly because I’m fast approaching an age when I, like you, am probably in no position to judge good pop music from bad any more, because much of it is simply not designed for me. But quite frankly, if albums have to die in order to rid Britain of your silly, self-important, self-deluding award, I can live with that.
(Oh, and just for the record I’m not saying any of this because our album The Regional Variations didn’t make it on to the list. We didn’t enter. Yes, you have to enter, which will cost you CASH MONEY. So commerce enters the equation before the process even starts).
Andrew
