The Mercury Prize nominees have been announced and with no surprise Adele and Tinie Tempah will head up an eclectic list of candidates for the £20,000 bounty.
This year the twelve hopefuls battling it out for the Barclaycard prize are made up of 4 female singer-songwriters and half of the artists are nominated for debut releases. Adele, who was nominated last year with her first album ‘19’, is up for the award again for her second instalment, ‘21’. The album was not only the biggest selling album of the year but broke the record, spending an 11 week stint at the top of the charts. The South Londoner missed out to PJ Harvey, a favourite alongside the ‘Someone Like You’ singer to snag the prize this year. PJ Harvey’s eighth album ‘Let England Shake’ has put her in the running but she is no stranger to these awards, having won in 2001. Enjoying his first Mercury Prize nomination however and no doubt hoping to win the award is Tinie Tempah with ‘Disc-Overy’. The album features the track ‘Pass Out’ which gained him an Ivor Novello, Brit Awards and phenomenal popularity last year. Open to talent from the UK and Ireland and judged by industry experts, the prize is highly regarded by artists and music lovers for its ability to highlight talents that, in some cases, have yet to reach commercial success. Benefitting will be acts like jazz pianist Gwilym Simcock with his offering and King Cresote who collaborated with Jon Hopkins for their nomination, both albums only reached 75 in the UK charts when released. All the acts have released albums in the last year, with a mixture of successes and on September 6th all nominated artists will perform at the Mercury Awards when the winner will be announced.
Here’s the full list of artists with albums up for the prize:
