Reply to: Mercury Prize 2009

[voodooflux]

And the winner is...

Speech Debelle - "Speech Therapy" [spotify]

[Coalman]

For those who have never heard any of them - try them free on Spotify.

Did this and many remind me of great music I grew up with in the 80s - every thing comes around again eh?

Voted for Forence + the Machine.

Good voice, nice tunes and reminds me of Kate Bush.

[Bagpuss]

I've no Idea who most are apart form Glasvegas and Kasbian. The former are OK but the lead singer is a t1t. Kasbian are like a more boring version of Oasis and that is saying something.
To be honest most music at the moment sounds like a re-run of the early to mid 80s electro music, I suppose it's new to most youngsters though

[sweetandsour]

Whole list are complete and utter dogsh**** (save Andyw). The music industry in this country is in terminal decline

They don't write tunes like they used to.

Modern music does not have proper tunes and you can't hear the words.

[NickFitz]

Fantastic AndyW option!

It got my vote.

WTS

Currently well in the lead, too - do the Mercury mob accept write-in candidates?

Last year, ThenClientCo gave me a rush job setting up the online voting system for the Capital Awards (which hasn't coped with the transition to the new CMS very well ). Each category had something like seven official nominees, as well as a write-in box labelled "Or tell us who you think should win" - the word "Or" made it pretty clear that it was an opportunity for you to suggest somebody else if you didn't like any of the listed candidates.

Literally the day before going live, word came down to change the labelling on that field to "Who do you think should win?" This resulted, with a sickening inevitability, in many punters reading through the nominations, seeing a box they could type into labelled as described, and typing in one of the names they had just read

As it was only some, but by no means all, voters who made this mistake, and as this was the time when broadcasters were under scrutiny for running iffy promotions and there was a prize draw involved, the lass responsible for counting the votes couldn't just take the count from the database; instead she had to manually go through several thousand write-ins, adding them to the votes for the appropriate candidate. Due to the abysmal spelling/typing skills of the general population, this process couldn't really be automated in the time available (from my cursory glances through the data I could see that at least one person misspelt "Mika", FFS).

She was stuck in the office until about four in the morning sorting that lot out - and all because somebody with no experience of UI design thought it looked tidier without the word "Or"

[chetty]

and where is the Paul Mc Cartney on the list? I thought you Britishers like Beetles

[Evil Hangover]

Whole list are complete and utter dogsh**** (save Andyw). The music industry in this country is in terminal decline

[VideoPete]

Bat For Lashes

It has to be Bat For Lashes for me "A sound like white magic caught in a black car's blazing trail". She has such a lovely natural voice.

But I think she's got strong competition.

[ace00]

Who are these people?

[Pogle]

I can appreciate what you're saying as they do have some poignant lyrics but being a Somerset lad the Wurzels have more resonance with me.

I thought they were all Brummies?

[stingman123]

I thought Girls Aloud were up for nomination?

[Moscow Mule]

I haven't heard everybody on the list, but my vote is anybody BUT Glasvegas.

I can't stand the blokes voice and from seeing him on TV he's more of an arrogant ***** than most musicians.

[Pondlife]

Fantastic AndyW option!

It got my vote.

[gingerjedi]

Not me, still listening.

Though guess their songs resonate with me particularly because they're singing about a world I grew up in and recognise, maybe not so much for other people.

I can appreciate what you're saying as they do have some poignant lyrics but being a Somerset lad the Wurzels have more resonance with me.

[RichardCranium]

Fantastic AndyW option!