Arctic Monkeys ‘Rob’ Mercury Prize
By: Thomas Hannan
In a move that shook the music world to its very core, the judging panel for the Mercury Music Prize last night met in a swanky London establishment to award the Arctic Monkeys (seen here congratulating each other) the honour of best album of the year for their 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' debut.
First off, well done, boys. That they've made a cracking debut album full of iconic singles and reinvigorated the UK guitar scene in a way not witnessed since Blur and Oasis spent all their time wishing terminal illnesses on each other cannot be denied. We've got nothing but congratulations for them.
After requesting that "somebody call 999, Richard Hawley's been robbed!", singer Alex Turner also went on to note his surprise at winning the accolade as "normally it doesn't go to a band that has sold so many records, to put it bluntly." He explained their success thusly; "they're good tunes, that's what we do and there aren't any tricks - people are trying to do too many tricks."
We honestly reckon that's about right.
So, we not so much got it wrong (who really thought anyone but the Arctics would end up walking away with it?!), as just backed the wrong fellas when we plumped for Hot Chip. Here's the reasoning behind it - as Alex Turner noted, the prize doesn't usually go to a band who've already sold a lot of records - and the Arctic Monkeys have sold an absolute metric f**k tonne. It's estimated there are three copies in every room in Britain. Whilst you couldn't begrudge them the prize whatsoever, as they've made a truly great LP, one can't help feeling that they didn't actually need it. Still, whoever said this had anything to do with charity?
But who would have benefited most? Well... Guillemots, Richard Hawley, Sway, Isobel Campbel, Scritti Politti and our own original preferred win-ees Hot Chip all made wonderful records. Go on, give 'Whatever People Say I Am...' a spin, enjoy it. But check out the fine pieces of work the other fellas produced as well. And never trust a rockfeedback 'dead cert' ever again.