Mercury Shortlist 2006

[stelfox]

However much people moan about all the new-indie stuff, have you noticed that nearly all the boy/girl suger pap bands have disappeared. Surely that has to be a good thing?

no this is not "surely" a good thing. i hate it when people use "boy/girlband" as blanket perjorative. it's the ultimate kneejerk antipop strawman. from the beginning of pop right up to a year or so ago boy/especially girlbands have made some of the best music around. and, honestly, can you really say that the guillemots or the editors are empirically better than girls aloud or the sugababes? i know i couldn't, because they're kind of not.
still, i'm glad the monkeys got it this year. it's a good record and deserves it, all the more given the dire nature of the rest of the list, and i won £100 in the bookies.
next year lily allen will win hands down, i'm going to see what odds i get on that now, even though i really dislike her

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

It's meant to be the kiss of death commercially, anyway isn't?

The monkeys are f*&^ed anyway. They'll disappear for a few years, then deliver a second album that's a pale retread of the first one & get panned for it in the press. It'll still sell well cos most of the people who bought ETPSIATWIN will buy it out of habit... but then those people will privately decide that it's not as good as the first one, thereby silently annihilating the Monkey's fanbase.

Album three could go one of several ways - it could be a yet paler retread of albums one and two. It could have a big time american producer drafted in to give it a more transatlantic sound in a misguided attempt to crack the US. It could pursue some unconvincing new musical direction in an attempt to make the band relevent again. It could effectively be an Alex Turner solo project if the band have by that time disintegrated (they've lost one member already, remember). It won't matter, because the press will ignore it, none of thier original fanbase will buy it after the disappointment of album 2, and potential new fans will be put off by the feeling that they are yesterdays news. The band will get dropped and disappear, though Alex, being the sort that gives good quote, will pop up on TV from time to time.

£50 says this is the AM's future career tragectory... anyone fancy a piece of that?

 

[gek-opel]

Its the beautiful thing about time- whilst it utterly fucks every single thing you know and love, it does so equally to everything you loath and despise... I'll enjoy watching the Arctic Donkeys cock it up big time... and that pap-ist OMM-wank fantasy Lilly Allen too (its the mixture of the insipid and the obnoxious which makes her music so galling, at least Paris Hilton has the decency to be as vapid and glassy as the cod reggae backing...)

And yes, girl/boy bands have disappeared, interesting micro-trend: pure production led plasticised primary coloured pop appears to have been hating it for about two years now at least, perhaps as nu-butofcoursenotactuallynewinanyway-indie gains popularity, also the continued assault in the US from Hip Hop/R'n'B I would guess...

 

[don_quixote]

arctic monkeys have such a terrible name. surely this is a cancer of the internet where bypassing the marketing exec means that these utterly shit names leak through the net?

 

[gek-opel]

Its already passed that point whereby through repetition alone even the most ridiculous of names merely becomes a signifier for the object it describes... but yes, it is an utterly duff name for anything really.