Speech Debelle and the Mercury 6 Year Rule
Congrats to Speech Debelle on winning the Mercury Music Prize, especially as it meant that the yawnsome Florence and the Machine, Glasvegas and Batf’lashes didn’t win.
The red-hot favourites were La Roux and Flozzer, with The Horrors attracting interest, but Mercury veterans should have been well aware of the Mercury 6 year rule, which means that a cutting edge ‘urban’ artist gets the nod after 5 years of mostly indie stodge.
The Mercury launched in ’92 with Primal Scream picking up the gong for Screamadelica, followed by a non-threatening list of indie favourites and dinner party-friendly high-achievers (M-People, for the love of God), until Roni Size won in ’97.
The next wilfully urban artist to win (I’ll ignore Ms Dynamite in ’02 as she was rubbish) was Dizzee Rascal in ’03.
And so, following Franz Ferdinand, Antony & The Johnsons, Arctic Monkeys, The Klaxons and Elbow, the urban bells were a-tolling this year for Speech Debelle. Hard-nosed Mercury gamblers will do well to keep their urban powder dry until 2015…
However, the most exciting thing about her album (which is genuinely really good) is that just 59 seconds into Searching, the opening track of Speech Therapy, she managed to predict the big news story of the week - namely the discovery of the new species of massive cat-size rats in Papua New Guinea by the BBC Wildlife unit.
“Surrounded by cats, filthy cats,
Sitting in steps with cat-sized rats”
Speech Debelle, Searching
The Guardian has provided a handy list of previous winners here…
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