You might not be able to see it, come the gala awards ceremony on 29 October, but the Mercury prize statuette comes riddled with bullet holes. Every year, it is peppered by potshots fired from all directions when open season – that’s the shortlist – is announced. Long after the glory of its winning fades, the winner’s trophy could be usefully repurposed as a novelty sieve. People still want this bit of clutter, though, because no matter how damaged, it comes with a £20,000 cheque attached, and the near-certainty of a life-changing career boost.
We are now in the final stages of the live-fire round, in which 12 nominees are whittled down to one on a Wednesday night. Nobody is ever happy with any shortlist, of course, except for the nominees. Actually, even they aren’t always happy: Damon Albarn, included this year for his solo album Everyday Robots, requested Gorillaz, one of his other bands, be removed from consideration in 2001. His stance seems to have softened since. The Arctic Monkeys, on their win in 2006, reacted thus: “Somebody call 999. Richard Hawley’s been robbed.”
Is the shortlist full of known, money-making quantities, as it was alleged in 2013, when Disclosure, Rudimental and David Bowie were in it? Cue sniping about the Mercury’s lack of support for obscure sounds, its selling out. (Did you know it was named after a now-defunct telecoms company? So out of touch.) Only one jazz record? Tokenism! Too many keyboards? Inauthentic! Lots of guitar bands? Racists! Perhaps people would be happier in a dystopian future, where whoever polls lowest in the judge’s votes is actually forced to wrestle wolverines to the death.
Is it a year when the list is busy with relative unknowns? This year, we have debutants FKA Twigs, Kate Tempest, East India Youth and Jungle, to name but four, and thus outcry on behalf of established acts – and soul singer Sam Smith, who has been hailed by many as “the voice of 2014”.
Complaining about prizes is, of course, a well-loved hobby for many arts consumers sorely in need of a pub to go to, and all to the good. Public engagement is an incontrovertible virtue, even if the public is engaged in the emoticon version of raspberry-blowing.
The Booker, the Turner prize and even lesser-known prizes like the Place are not immune to controversy, either. The Booker has let Americans in, perhaps depriving African or East Indian voices of a spot. The biennial Place prize is not, as you might think, for the architecture of public spaces, but dance. Its selection-slash-commissioning process routinely finds dance aficionados tied into acrobatic pretzel shapes. Why, oh why, does the Turner never go to a nice painting of some flowers?
Music fandom being what it is – opinionated, vituperative, intolerant – the Mercury prize seems to draw fire like no other. The conspiracy theorists are right: it was born as a way of stimulating album sales, as though this was some act of great Machiavellian harm. In doing so, the Mercury would spotlight records that deserved recognition beyond mere market forces, and reward the most outstanding one.
Humans being the flawed, puny and biased things we are, this could only ever be an inexact science. Taste-making is a dark art, and drawing up aesthetic criteria for an arts prize is an ever murkier one. The invited panel changes slightly every year, as does the pool of records, moving goalposts along shifting sands.
We all know – we think – what sort of records win these things: those that make contemporary stylistic innovations while packing emotional resonance. While the bookies seem to plump for whoever they’ve heard of (so, not Polar Bear) the Mercuriest prize ever was probably awarded to the xx (2010), even though PJ Harvey has actually won it twice, in 2011 and 2001. This rationale dictates that FKA Twigs – whose internal nightscapes owe a great deal to the xx – will walk away with it. But rationales can falter. Remember the outcry when M People deprived Blur in 1994?
Ultimately, the Mercury is necessary, in some form, an annual appointment worth making. Loving to hate it is necessary too. It is a wonky novelty sieve, sifting out some sounds that might be worth investigating, if you haven’t already. It says something about the aural world we are currently living in: vivid and eclectic, both across and within records. On Wednesday, Nick Grimshaw will hand over some lucre to some deserving artist, who, since they are not Sam Smith, might otherwise be forced to moonlight in a boiler room, selling the gullible timeshares in sunny Viagra. Whoever wins will gladly take the bullet holes with the trophy.
