WORSTEST ALBUM TO WIN MERCURY MUSICS PRIZE!

Obviously to YOU, Alex. Lots of other people might disagree. I'm not saying those are my favourite albums from 1994 - they're not - just saying that given the remit of the awards as was and as is, M People seem like a very odd choice compared to those three.

they've had a token poppy act occasionally though, i remember the spice girls were on the shortlist one year? it's mildly surprising that m people won, but it's hardly outrageous.

i saw roni size at the new college ball a few years ago, he was brilliant. never owned his albums though oddly!

Remember when "Brown Paper Bag" was de rigeur for every police chase scene on British tv?

Haha, what are they using these days? I've not seen any police TV in an age.

Hard-Fi

Kevin's point about M People is true to some extent. M People had some club credibility at least before winning the MMP largely due to remixes and Pickering's profile. At that point they weren't too far away from Loveland, Evolution, Happy Clappers and similar UK house stuff a lot of which obviously did and does suck altho some of it was good (e.g. T-Empo's 'Saturday Night Sunday Morning' - shame M People didn't do something more like that, wouldn't have been too much of a leap). Heather Small's often Yoda-esque voice was definitely a big part of the problem. And none of this really explains why they won the prize.

hahah yoda-esque. pretty spot on

Those 1994 nominations in full:

M People – Elegant Slumming
Blur – Parklife
Ian McNabb – Head Like A Rock
Shara Nelson – What Silence Knows
Michael Nyman – The Piano Concerto and MGV
The Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation
Pulp – His'n'Hers
Take That – Everything Changes
Therapy? – Troublegum
Paul Weller – Wild Wood

That years scandalous ommission; Aphex Twin SAW II. Presumably with only 10 entries no room for the token folk or jazz act this year. If I had to pick only one of them I'd probably pick Nyman with Blur/Pulp close runners up.

*whisper* I liked the Badly Drawn Boy album when it first came out and suspect I'd still find it quiet pleasant now.

Gomez is by far the worst of these but I haven't heard the M People record. Bearing in mind I've never liked a single song of theirs I suspect it'd be vying for the top spot at least.

New Forms is fucking boring but is due to come back into fashion any minute now.

The BDB album is really pleasant. I loved it when it came out. Not liked anythign else he's done, but he had some really, really good tunes, and there's a really interesting flow to it, too, with the underwater stuff and the segues.

i think blueski gets it spot on why m people HAD to win! the prize was three years old and the previous winners had both been from an indie rock mileu. for them to fail to in some way acknowledge "dance", screamadelica for all its danceyness is very much coming from a "rock "frame of reference, would have really made them look like a prize simply for indie rock.

Matt did you ever like any jazzy DnB stuff?

I guess I would've preferred Pulp or The Prodigy to win out of those on the list.

that's if it's actually as thought out as i'm making out. maybe the judges just liked it a lot.

I don't see why M People HAD to win the prize to acknowledge dance music when the Prodigy were on that list.

"Once Around the Block" is probably king of the "Best song by the worst artist" award, perhaps tying with "When I Argue I See Shapes"

ILM just ate my "surely Prodigy are the obvious winner in that case?" post.

prodigy were way too, well, chavvy for mercury and for people who cared about it in '94. am amazed it was nommed.

haven't heard BDB since it came out but it can't be worse than arctic monkeys, franz, m people, a & the js...

hindsight there

how could they have ignored it at the time?

Shara Nelson – What Silence Knows

har, i remember this! it was pretty good!

m people really don't stick out from the '94 shortlist at all.

i love 'Once Around The Block' but 'The Shining' now makes me want to rename him Badly Decapitated Boy. you know, like, i would take his head off with the hat still on it yeah?

this is the prodigy before keith took centre stage innit? hmmm. still the m people represent more of a break from the previous than prodigy would have been. also they had the soul/ jazzy thing going on, it sort of tips the hat to another, non britrock, zeitgeist.

this is the prodigy before keith took centre stage innit? hmmm. still the m people represent more of a break from the previous than prodigy would have been.

tough call, but i don't think so. jilted is the most badass of all mercury nominated records.

i can only remember the select review of 'jilted', which was saying 'haters still think of howlett as a cheesy quaver but ffs this shits all over everything lamestains'. which was otm but -- i reckon -- a contrarian opinion. this was the year of SAW and 'snivilisation' and 'haunted dancehall'.

Its not that they needed a non-indie record to win. they needed a non-student record to win

ha, difference being?

no £50 man in those days. only students and recent grads liked Blur, Suede and Primal Scream back then.

£50 man would have been buying dire straits and sting then no? i think Filey is 8080TM as much as prodigy are dance they were still much loved by the nme/maker/select axis no? m people represent a break from that consensus.

£50 was a lot of green in those days.

although music was more expensive.

£50 man would have been buying dire straits and sting then no?

no.

as much as prodigy are dance they were still much loved by the nme/maker/select axis no? m people represent a break from that consensus.

yeahbut nme/mm, and even select, were still basically indie in 1994. mercury's constituency was not identical with that world at all. it's for people --and not students so mmuch -- who want an alternative to the britannia music prize -- so they can pick up the hot jams without having to keep up with these matters.

that's what i'm saying they had to make a move to differentiate themselves. without m people winning the criticism could have been that the award was no different than the nme year end poll or whatevs. q was going in the early nineties wasn't it. what would £50 man be buying to before bluasis hit?

Someone find the NME 1994 list.

I suspect, if one album 'broke' dance to indie kids, it was Jilted Generation.

um screamdelica? though i am now refuting what i said upthread. gateway drug?

what would £50 man be buying to before bluasis hit?

this is a key question because in a way mercury helped invent the £50 bloke. yer dire straits/sting/phil collins listeners have the income of the £50 but they couldn't have given a fuck about appearing vaguely edgy by owning the mark ronson or dizzee rascal album. the £50 bloke is tied up with 'middle youth'.

£50 man would have been buying dire straits and sting then no?

no.

actually yes, pretty much. the equivalent stereotype would've still been buying rock has-beens like that.

Kevin appears to have confused "homosexuals" with "event planners putting on a motivational conference for industrial lighting salesmen"

I didn't use the word "homosexuals" nor would I ever. But hey - thanx for the stimulating conversation.

not dire straits. but what i'm saying is no-one thought sting was cool; £50 bloke *does* think he's a tiny little bit cool.

xpost

lol u just did lol11!!

hands up anyone who actually knows a '£50 man' anyway (and do your parents own any of the winning albums from this decade?)

"£50 strawman"

when i say £50 man i just mean 'word readers' basically. never met one -- just imagining their ideal reader.

Guess which artists on the winners list my Mum is most likely to listen to by a MASSIVE distance. Beings with M.

I don't think my Dad would like any of them much, POSSIBLY Gomez, POSSIBLY some of the Franz.

lolrents

<i>um screamdelica? though i am now refuting what i said upthread. gateway drug?</i>

That's rock guys appropriating dance as psychedelia. Prodigy came straight out of rave culture, straight from Charlie, and they dropped this; it's total dance, despite the occasional guitars from Mr Butt. Half my friends didn't understand it AT ALL. It was the year Cobain died and they were getting into Sonic Youth and Metallica. This is not rock songs or instrumentals with a dance sheen.

i think togtq's ideas about cool and middle youth are really important. this list possibly more so than any rave or britpop narrative shows the impulse for gentrification in the 90s. the industries desire to control and market whilst retaining the "cred". was this a 90s thing? this michael bracewell about the 90s book i read argued something very similar, though i can't quite rememberit exaclty.

Didn't think Gizz Butt was on this one? Also re:

yeahbut nme/mm, and even select, were still basically indie in 1994. mercury's constituency was not identical with that world at all.

All of those had decent sized dance sections and there was generally much more coverage of (established) dance acts than there is now. Also I think the Mercury was still finding its feet in 94, its third year - I dunno if people really knew what it was sposed to be about (do they now?)

Also I think the Mercury was still finding its feet in 94, its third year - I dunno if people really knew what it was sposed to be about (do they now?)

-- DJ Mencap, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 4:03 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

yeah this is key. tbh '94 was the first year i heard of it, mainly because of all the fuss about blur Not Winning in the nme.

since then everything has sort of got 'closer together' -- nme, britannia, mercury, the broadsheets.

I'm sure Gizz Butt's on one track on JG.

the mercuries possibly represent an industry fight back, now won. they show that the suits didn't want to be taken by suprise again, that whatever hip new yoof culture appeared they'd be cool with it, cos y know they are cool dudes.

i would count myself as a 50 quid bloke in the original sense, not in the 'fostered by Word magazine sense.

i bought word early on, but it settled down v quickly into Mojo lite.

Did the lighthouse family ever get nominated? my god they were shit.

actually they...no, i can't do it this time.