by All awards are arbitrary, which should be well-established by now.
But the Mercury Prize has always positioned itself as a force that goes against established orders. For years, it has promoted itself as a beacon for the integrity of the arts, championing the independents, shining a light on the proudly alternative, and supporting the grassroots.
However, with mounting scrutiny, not just on the Mercury Prize, but the whole industry, it has proved an increasingly hard sell. For years, the indie champagne party was exclusively held in the swankiest rooms in London, filled with shirts, ties, and an air of cocaine comparisons.
For ten years in a row, it predictably ended with an act from the city swanning back to their swanky flat, accidentally leaving their award in the back of their homeward-bound black cab. Is that really reflective of the music industry at large in the UK and Ireland?
Last year, English Teacher became the first act from outside of the capital to claim the award in a decade. That felt like a step in the right direction. But still, the ceremony effectively took place in an empty room. None of the public on which the industry relies were present. Live music was replaced by prerecords. So, it might have been a nudge forward, but something was still amiss.
With that in mind, if 2024 was a positive step, then the 2025 edition felt like a giant leap. As thousands piled into the Utilita Arena on the banks of the Tyne in Newcastle, there was a much more palpable sense of what the Mercury Prize has always claimed to be about.
Beyond the prestige of the pending christening of ‘Album of the Year’, people buzzed about seeing acts that they had never heard of, talked about supporting the industry, and thrived on a feeling of local pride.
As a local myself, you could spot the familiar faces of fellows who attend 200 gigs every year, local record store owners, buskers, young bands who hunger to be on the stage themselves one day, and first-timers, drawn in by the glamour, who might now have a life of live music ahead. These are all vital figures who keep the arts afloat, but often feel cut off from its functions in every sense. The admittedly rather corporate arena had a fitting grassroots, community feel.
In fact, the actual notion that an ‘Album of the Year’ was soon to be announced had all but disappeared by the time ‘Spike Island’ stunned the crowd and Pulp kicked off the party in timeless style. That’s how it should be. If awards are arbitrary, then supporting the arts and music industry is its polar inverse, and the more often the former can join the latter, the better.
These are trying times, not just for music but in myriad troubling ways, so if a trophy awarded by ‘expert judges’ can represent more than a bookshelf ornament and quiz question a decade down the line, then more power to it. If the already perilous existence of the music industry is about to shrink a further 20% owing to AI in the next four years, then what feels more important: fastidiously fussing over prestige and critical critique or honouring the wider picture?
While a win for a local hero might have looked like an icky loss of integrity among some of the Sam Fender naysayers back home, that stance, though justifiable on paper, would be reliant on two factors to carry any weight in reality: a) an obvious winner being overlooked, and b) Fender’s own effort being obviously unworthy. Both of those fail to hold water. People Watching is a good record, and nothing really towered above it.
Thereafter, the energy in the room swung a Fender win towards an inevitability. Far from people pleasing, from inside the Utilita Arena, that made the victory announcement feel like a giant leap forward for the Mercury Prize. In fact, one small moment in Fender’s own victory speech and the song he chose to play came to personify the triumph of the evening in every which way.
When collecting the award, Fender dedicated the win to Annie Orwin. Without the late local actor, whom he described as a “surrogate mother”, encouraging him onto the stage and supporting him throughout his rise, he wouldn’t have been an artist, let alone a Mercury Prize-winning one.
He wrote ‘People Watching’ about his trips back from the care home where she died in 2023, aged 68. And the record that followed was flush with the black and white, dark and light, of stark social realism, and the contrasting boon of a progressive and cohesive community’s potential to overcome those troubled, inequitable realities.
It might not be everyone’s favourite album of the year, and maybe it wasn’t even the best (but what was?), but it was an album of hope and unity, unflinchingly capturing the plight of the working classes and art’s capacity to elevate. In times of division and darkness, honouring that was vital, especially in a room where it resonated with thousands because they recognised the same plight that Sam Fender sings of.
So, as thousands of Geordies flocked to the nearest pub, blabbering about a full roster of fantastic performances, from Pa Salieu to Martin Carthy and the show-stopping Jacob Alon, collective hope, heartening unity, and an appreciation for music seemed to abound – that’s what the Mercury Prize should be about.
