The Student Playlist

Showcasing the Best New Music, Curating the Classics

Mercury Prize Winners – From Worst To Best

10. Young Fathers – DEAD (2014)

Another great example of the Mercury Prize doing what it ought to do, providing exposure to new artists, there were long odds on Young Fathers for the 2014 award, with other nominees including big beasts like Damon Albarn and Bombay Bicycle Club, and a host of exciting debuts from FKA twigs, Kate Tempest and Royal Blood, all of which would have deserved to win.

With its innovative use of tape loops, rudimentary instrumentation and spectacular lyrics of struggle and glamour, DEAD was an alluring and credible collision of independent, DIY aesthetics and hip-hop style. The Mercury judges were ultimately proved right, and the Edinburgh trio have continued to be one of the most thrillingly original British artists over the last five years, their music forming a key part of the soundtrack to Danny Boyle’s T2: Trainspotting. (LISTEN)

09. Antony & The Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now (2005)

Antony Hegarty, the artist now known as ANOHNI, caused a bit of controversy when she was nominated for the 2005 Mercury Prize. Fellow nominees Kaiser Chiefs, heavily tipped for their successful debut Employment, alleged she shouldn’t have been eligible, raised almost entirely in New York City but having been born in Chichester (see Benjamin Clementine for the same argument).

What nobody could dispute, however, was the quality of the record itself. I Am A Bird Now was a collection of heart-rending songs exploring gender, identity, loneliness and general affairs of the heart, encapsulated by the incredible opener ‘Hope There’s Someone’. The public agreed, with the album rocketing 119 places in the UK Albums Chart to no.16 in the week after its victory, the single biggest sales increase in Mercury history. (LISTEN)

08. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006)

Some Mercury Prizes are just nailed on from the word go. Faced with the debut album by the last genuinely revolutionary band in British guitar music, and bona-fide instant classic that is still the fastest-selling debut by a band in chart history, the Mercury judges really didn’t have any other choice in 2006 than to fall in line with popular opinion and award the prize to Arctic Monkeys. In fact, pretty much the only person who didn’t seem to think that they would win was the band’s lead singer, Alex Turner.

Accepting the award, a sheepish and ridiculously youthful-looking Turner memorably quipped in his broad Sheffield accent (remember that, before his American twang?) “someone dial 999, Richard Hawley’s been robbed” – referring to his fellow Sheffielder’s excellent album Coles Corner, also in the field that year. He could rest easy though, because Whatever People Say I Am… has aged just as marvellously as Hawley’s, and provided a launch-pad for a career that continues today with just as much commercial success and critical acclaim. (LISTEN)

07. PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (2001)

We arrive at the first of two appearances for the incomparable Polly Jean Harvey on this list. Having been nominated twice in the Nineties for Rid Of Me (in 1993) and To Bring You My Love (in 1995), it was third time lucky for PJ with the 2001 prize. Not that the evening brought any kind of celebration, as the singer memorably accepted the award over the phone from the other side of the Atlantic, where she and her band were confined to their Washington D.C. hotel room on September 11th after the country went into lock-down.

Indeed, the whole ceremony was a muted affair, and many saw PJ as an appropriate and respectful choice of winner because of the album’s New York-inspired lyrics, particularly the Thom Yorke duet ‘This Mess We’re In’ whose opening verse went “Can you hear them? / The helicopters / I’m in New York / No need for words now / We sit in silence”. But Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea was a graceful and worthy winner on musical terms in any event, scanning as one of Harvey’s career highlights even now. (LISTEN)

06. Portishead – Dummy (1995)

Unquestionably one of the most tasteful albums of the Nineties, and one that’s aged significantly better than most from that decade, Dummy helped to make trip-hop a highly popular trend when it prevailed in the 1995 Mercury Prize, with its creators Portishead putting Bristol and the South-West on the musical map, alongside colleagues like Massive Attack and Tricky (whose Maxinquaye was nominated the same year).

Constructed from spy soundtrack atmospherics, tasteful samples and immaculate drum loops, Dummy found a home with every switched-on music fan. A year after the M People fiasco, 1995 was arguably the year in which the Mercury Prize properly established its identity and raison d’etre, plumping for something that deserved exposure over the populist choices represented by Britpop big-hitters Oasis, Elastica and Supergrass. (LISTEN)

05. The xx – xx (2010)

Thankfully, the Mercury judges had the good sense to resist the temptation to go for what would have been the populist choice of Mumford & Sons in 2010, instead putting their public-service hats on and awarding it to The xx. A steady slow-burner since its low-key release on tiny independent Young Turks 12 months before in August 2009, xx went from an underground, word-of-mouth success to mainstream stars pretty much overnight, continuing to sell strongly and gaining an international profile.

An album of quiet economy and huge emotional clout, constructed from Jamie Smith’s minimalist soundscapes and an almost diary-like level of intimacy from co-singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, xx has informed a subsequent decade of tastemakers and chart stars alike. Arguably, this was the last time when the Mercury Prize actually achieved its real purpose – giving a huge boost of publicity and attention to a band that truly deserved it, but who might not have received it otherwise. (LISTEN)

04. Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner (2003)

With black British musicians usually unfairly derided by the music press (think So Solid Crew, Ms. Dynamite etc.) for years and years, the Mercury Prize gave a huge boost of credibility to the nascent grime scene in 2003 when it propelled a then-19 year old Dylan Mills, aka Dizzee Rascal, to proper mainstream attention and helped him become Britain’s first international rap superstar. An obvious choice of winner in a beige field of contestants like Athlete, Coldplay and The Darkness, this was yet another example of the Mercurys in its star-making capacity.

A skeletal concoction of rib-shaking bass, concrete-hard beats and queasy synths from DJ Semtex perfectly complemented Dizzee’s flows which ranged from goofy to righteously angry, Boy In Da Corner was a true game-changer. While Dizzee has subsequently turned himself into a bit of clown-like figure through needless collaborations with the likes of Calvin Harris and Robbie Williams, his debut is still unbelievably fresh 15 years later and will continue to influence younger generations. (LISTEN)

03. Pulp – Different Class (1996)

Having existed since 1979 (yes, really!), Pulp deservedly came off the sidelines to earn buckets of critical kudos and no small amount of success with their 1994 album His ‘N’ Hers, but that was nothing compared to what was about to happen to them over the following two years. Having been roped in at the 11th hour to fill in for The Stone Roses and headline Glastonbury ’95, they scored a no.2 hit with ‘Common People’ – one of Britpop’s defining anthems – and sold over a million copies of Different Class, the album that remains their finest hour.

Half state-of-the-nation address and half personal valedictory statement from Jarvis Cocker, it was the kind of album that even the best artists only produce once in their careers. Its success was everything that Britpop could and should have been about – a storming of the music industry’s gilded gates by society’s outsiders. Cocker poured a lifetime of social and sexual frustrations into a collection of listenable radio hits and gritty, paranoid psychodramas, and Pulp rightly walked away with the 1996 Mercury Prize. (LISTEN)

02. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake (2011)

Coming exactly a decade after her first triumph, PJ Harvey became the first and, to date, only artist to have ever won the Mercury Prize twice when she prevailed in 2011 for her riveting collection of contemporary anti-war folk songs on Let England Shake, impressively edging out similarly praised debut albums from Anna Calvi, James Blake, Everything Everything, Tinie Tempah and Katy B, not to mention the commercial juggernaut of Adele’s 21.

Researched in great detail, Harvey’s lyrics, taken from articulations of soldiers’ experiences in Iraq to diaries from Tommys in the trenches of World War I, had an almost three-dimensional sense of vividness and heart-swallowing urgency. Set to a minimalist backdrop of zinging tunes and strummed auto-harps, Let England Shake was an instant, modern masterpiece. As one reviewer put it, Hemingway had the war novel, Francis Ford Coppola had the war movie, and now PJ Harvey had made the war album. (LISTEN)

01. Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1992)

Perhaps not the greatest of indicators of the Mercury Prize’s health that the best album ever to triumph was the winner of the inaugural prize in 1992 and hasn’t been topped in over a quarter of a century, but actually it’s just a historical anomaly. Screamadelica, the album that helped cement the popularity of indie-dance’s crossover to the mainstream as well as revitalise its creators’ fortunes, would top most lists of any genre if you were forced to consider it at all. Only Saint Etienne’s Foxbase Alpha stood any realistic chance of running it close for the first ever Mercury Prize.

Before Screamadelica, Primal Scream dealt in the kind of faithful Byrds and Stooges-indebted retro rock that would most kindly be described as ‘record collection’ rock. After they had discovered house music, E and the talents of remixer Andrew Weatherall (brought on board as co-producer alongside the likes of The Orb and sometime Stones producer Jimmy Miller), their image had been totally transformed.

The album itself is a kaleidoscope of influences, ranging from woozy, cavernous dub to gospel rock, and airy synthetic dreamscapes to aching, fragile torch ballads. Tracks like ‘Loaded’, ‘Movin’ On Up’ and ‘Come Together’ are both era-defining party starters and yet absolutely transcend their time and place. Primal Scream are still in rude health today despite enduring their peaks and troughs, and were nominated subsequently in 1994 and 1997, but Screamadelica is still by far and away their crowning achievement. (LISTEN)

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