Established in 1992, the Mercury Prize was envisaged as an antidote to the commercially-focused Brit Awards, recognising albums that moved music forwards, without any recourse to fashion or trends.<\/p>\n
Of the last 34 winners, 20 have been debuts – from artists including Arctic Monkeys, Suede and Franz Ferdinand. <\/p>\n
Many people have mistakenly assumed it is a prize for first albums – but this year’s shortlist included only two: Jacob Alon’s delicate and beautiful In Limerence, and Joe Webb’s Hamstrings and Hurricanes, a jazz album partially influenced by Oasis.<\/p>\n
This year saw the ceremony move from London to Newcastle, as part of a wider music industry initiative towards decentralisation.<\/p>\n
“Talent is everywhere but opportunity isn’t,” said Jo Twist, says chief executive of the BPI, which organises the awards. <\/p>\n
“So it’s only right that we bring these large scale shows (outside London) to show there are opportunities within the music industry without having to move city.”<\/p>\n
Fender noted the change, saying Newcastle had “always been in an isolated bubble” from the music industry.<\/p>\n
“So for it to be recognised is really important. Hopefully it can be the beginning of many other wonderful things.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Established in 1992, the Mercury Prize was envisaged as an antidote to the commercially-focused Brit Awards, recognising albums…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-205176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}