Why We Don't Want Bloc Party To Win The Mecury
The nominations for this year's Mercury Music Prize have been anounced, and they include Coldplay, Maximo Park, Kaiser Chiefs, Hard-Fi and Bloc Party.

Regular readers will know that we love The Kaisers, Hard-Fi, The Magic Numbers and Bloc Party, and for this reason we don't want them to win.

I know it sounds cruel but The Mercury prize is a curse and every band or artist that has ever won it has, at best sturggled under the pressure to produce a follow up, and at worse never produced another record again.

Think of the previous winners: Badly Drawn Boy, Pulp, Portishead, Roni Size, Ms Dynamite, erm, M People, all of them cursed. Ok so the jury is out on Franz Ferdinand, maybe they'll be the exception that proves the rule.

Perhaps the best thing is to be nominated. Lots of exposure = lots of album sales to people who only buy records that get reviewed in the Sunday supliments.

So, I hope the judges go for The Go! Team - they have all the credentials for a Mercury win and (without being too cruel) we won't missthem if they disappear without a trace.
- posted by Nigella @ 8:20 PM