The Barclaycard Prize Has Never Been So Relevant

A Career-Defining Moment Or A Waste of Everybody’s Time? The Barclaycard Music Prize
words: Jamie Milton

When Guy Garvey and his pals stepped up to collect their Mercury Music Prize, they described it as a career high and everybody collectively inhaled and declared “yeah, they deserved that”, and got on with their lives. It’d be easy to start thinking that this still relatively youthful award only impacts on the lives of musicians. But the build-up, the hyperbole surrounding a record after the shortlist is announced, the betting, the rumours, the perhaps award-winning live performances on the night – people care about this award and there’s no point in even providing a counter-argument.

When an act goes on to win the prize, their record sales go sky-high, the people behind the album high five, the winner goes on to bigger things. This could not have been more exemplified under Elbow, a band whom until last September were the Oxford Dictionary example of “underrated”. But then they went on to play Wembley Arena, sell out tours, reach new heights. Dizzee Rascal and the Arctic Monkeys’ subsequent success was probably due more to Calvin Harris-produced smash hits and already established worldwide fame respectively. For Antony Hegarty however, a winner in 2005 (maybe as much as 80% due to a spellbinding performance of ‘Hope There’s Someone’ ), he became a respected homosexual musician, an exceptional talent that people flocked to see. He grew because of winning, without a doubt.

Some winners haven’t prevailed quite as much. In fact many have fallen into relative obscurity. ‘Calcutta Cyber Cafe’ is 1999 winner Talvin Singh’s fifth album proper and it came out this year. Let’s be honest, no-one really knew that until I just told you, did you?

“The judges have their own, personal agenda”

It’s easy to see the prize as less of a definitive album of the year decider and more of a career-breaker. It’s not entirely subjective, but nor is it entirely credible. That said: even today, Glasvegas and Kasabian have spoken out of their honour at being selected and their desire to win. And The Invisible, the most obscure artist on the list to some extent, bar the token jazz act, will know perfectly well that a win, or any media support towards them before the evening, will boost their career like nothing else could. Largely, a mere mention on the shortlist nowadays is enough to kick-start a musician’s career. Look at Burial, for instance, an underground dub-step pioneer who finally became known as…an underground dub-step pioneer. He became such a name that even The Sun rumoured that the man behind the sound was Norman Cook or Aphex Twin. That was just the editor having a sneaky search of the word “electronic music” on his blackberry but even so, a man who would much rather have remained anonymous became a mini-star in the space of just under a month.

The judges must surely have on the agenda, the impact of an awarding of the prize to each artist, how it might or might not affect their careers depending on the result. If that was to be their top priority, they would hand it out without debate to The Invisible. But other factors certainly come into it: it’s been a while since a female has been crowned champion (Ms. Dynamite unfortunately, in many ways, being the last in 2002) and a notable turning of a blind eye towards the likes of Amy Winehouse, Laura Marling and Bat For Lashes might rife up speculation that this year’s the year. In that case, the winner might just be Florence Welch, for fear of an award being handed out to an “electro” act, so soon after Klaxons won it. The reason I don’t mention Bat For Lashes is because last year, the award was handed out to veterans of the music industry in Elbow. This year, a debut album seems more likely to receive the honour, that being Glasvegas’ self-titled, which I would recommend a nice wager on. We’ve already witnessed an avoidance to hand the prize out to a similar act than the prior year’s winner, in the omission of Doves from this year’s shortlist, a band who the bookies had down as 4/1 favourite to win before today’s announcement. The outstanding record on said shortlist is The Horrors’ ‘Primary Colours’. It’s certainly the most critically acclaimed as well. That doesn’t usually clinch it; Klaxons’ ‘Myths of the Near Future’ was patchy, ‘The Seldom Seem Kid’ narrowly outdone by Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ and ‘Untrue’. The judges have their own personal agenda – they’ll want to be unpredictable. If they were to do that however, they’d go for the token jazz act. But let’s not go that far.

mp3: Elbow – Mirrorball // alt