Tuesday 8th September 2009 | Posted by Eric

In the last ten minutes or so, it has been confirmed that Speech Debelle has won the Mercury Prize for Album of the Year. Congratulations are in order, obviously, but this year's nominations in particular have got me thinking about just what makes an album worthy of a Mercury nomination.

And the only thing I can think of is this; Publicity

Now I know people will argue against me on this, but looking at the nominations over the past decade or so, the names of the artists nominated just jump out at you. And this is because you recognise the majority of them who were already commercial successes before even being nominated.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with being commercial. Nor am I saying that the artists who are nominated are not talented. But what I am saying is that, in my opinion, the majority of these artists are in there because they have been accepted by the public and are now seen as "stars." In actual fact, seven of this year's eleven nominations are on either BBC Radio 1 or Radio 2's playlist or getting regular airtime from one of their "specialist" (and I use that term lightly) DJs.

Lets take this year's nominations for example. The albums by La Roux, Forence and the Machine, Kasabian, Bat For Lashes and Glas Vegas which were nominated have all been top five hits over the last few months. The publicity has been building around Florence Welch for over a year now. The same with La Roux. Yet some of these albums received mix reviews - for instance, Planet Sound gave La Roux's album a very average 6/10.

Obviously there are the lesser known artists nominated every year. This year sees fantastic artists Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Lisa Hannigan nominated for their albums. Yet these less commercially successful albums are instantly at the bottom of the pile when it comes to the odds of them winning and looking back at the 18 years of the awards, very few of these have actually won.

Groups such as Aqua have shown us that, if something is catchy, it doesn't have to be particularly well made or have any original features to do well, and it is this that worries me. With the way the Mercury has progressed over the last few years, it seems to me like the judges have been sucked in by the very same thing that made Aqua and similar groups so popular - if you hear it on the radio, if you see it in the music magazines and on billboards, you are going to think "wow, that must be a good album - look at all the advertisement it's getting!"

In the future, what I would love to see is an alternative prize that actually awards originality and creativity, instead of just commercial success. Between us in the office, we must listen to close to one hundred different tracks every day and so we know that the Mercury is simply not representing the best of modern music.

I don't understand why Mercury don't just merge with the Brits. Let's face it, it's practically the same award anyway.

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