Yawn!

So the Arctic Monkeys have won the Mercury Music Prize. How completely pointless. The Mercury Music Prize has never been about awarding the best album of the year, but serves more as a great promotional tool for largely unknown acts. Was '97 winner Roni Size's "New Forms" really the best album in a year that saw the release of such landmark albums as OK Computer, Fat of The Land and Spice. Likewise with ’98 winner Gomez' "Bring It On" which beat the likes of Urban Hyms, International Velvet and Life Thru A Lens. No, but they offered something different, something outside the mainstream that deserved to be heard by a wider audience.

So why give it to a band that’s already had two #1s, sold nearly a million copies already and have been hyped to within an inch of their life. Surely acts like The Guillemots, Hot Chip or Richard Hawley would have benefitted more. Look what the Prize did for Antony and the Johnsons and Badly Drawn Boy, (we’ll forget about Talvin Singh). I’m not saying big albums from big bands shouldn’t be nominated but this is the second time in three years that a million-selling album has won it. Who next? James Blunt? They might as well just leave this kind of thing to The Brits.