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Mercury Music Prize Shortlist Revealed
23-Jul-2008
Written by: Ray Padgett
Radiohead and Robert Plant made the list, but the betting odds favorite is an underground DJ.
One of the most prestigious awards in British music, the Nationwide Mercury Music Prize, has a history of picking lesser-known artists and making them hits. In the shortlist for the 2008 award of best British album, announced Tuesday from a group of more than 240 candidates, music giants like Radiohead and Robert Plant have to fight off many lesser-known acts like Neon Neon and Portico Quartet.
"I think [this shortlist] shows how much musicians still do treat the album as a significant, formal way of making music," said chair of judges Simon Frith, adding that the list reflects "a remarkably rich year for British music."
The favorite for the prize is by one of the more obscure musicians, according to the William Tell betting agency. Done by an anonymous DJ, Burial’s Untrue album has 7/2 winning odds. If you haven’t heard of Burial, don’t feel too bad. He (or she) creates dubstep music, a style that combines offbeat rhythms with floor-shaking bass that is picking up speed in London clubs. This is not the first honor for the DJ’s second album however; it was the second highest rated album of 2007 on review averaging Web site Metacritic, after The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime.
Third on the Metacritic list was Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which oddsmakers put as the second most likely to win it all. Rainbows generated a lot of hype last fall when it was released in the pay-what-you-want format on the band’s Web site. The band’s fourth appearance on the shortlist, they have not yet won. Combine the album’s news-making history with the criticism the Mercury committee has gotten for ignoring one of Britain’s most influential bands, and this could be their year.
The winner will be announced September 9 at a ceremony broadcast live on the BBC. Previous winning albums include Klaxons’ Myths of the Near Future (‘07), Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (’06), and Antony and the Johnsons’ I Am a Bird Now (’05).
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