Who Will (and Who Should) Win 2024’s Mercury Prize?
Ahead of tonight’s 33rd annual Mercury Prize event, designed to commemorate the best British or Irish album released each year, we break down each of the 12 candidates and offer our takes on which are most likely to take the award home.
Our predictions do not reflect those of the bookies arranging bets on the prize and should not be taken as accurate probabilities for each album’s success.
The nominees are:
- Barry Can’t Swim – When Will We Land?
- BERWYN – WHO AM I
- Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
- Cat Burns – early twenties
- Charli XCX – BRAT
- CMAT – Crazymad, for Me
- Corinne Bailey Rae – Black Rainbows
- corto.alto – Bad With Names
- English Teacher – This Could Be Texas
- Ghetts – On Purpose, with Purpose
- Nia Archives – Silence Is Loud
- The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy
Barry Can’t Swim – When Will We Land? [2023, Ninja Tune]
UK electronic music is thriving right now, both in the underground and the mainstream, so representing its growth with a Mercury Prize win seems overdue. Scottish producer Joshua Mainnie – a.k.a Barry Can’t Swim – will be hoping to claim the prize with his first studio album, although it doesn’t seem certain that he’ll be successful.
When Will We Land? has received positive reviews from critics for its immersive quality and varied arrangements, mixing house floor-fillers with splashes of classical, jazz and world music to create a record with an engrossing, joyous atmosphere. However, against fierce competition from other dance records such as Charli XCX’s BRAT and Nia Archives’ Silence Is Loud, Mainnie’s album feels somewhat overshadowed. Perhaps in a year with less electronic representation, he may fare better, but the timing has proven unfortunate.
It’s still a promising debut record that demonstrates a lot of versatility and smart musicianship. A steady build-up of celebrated producers receiving nods in recent years, such as Fred Again and Jockstrap in 2023, suggests that hopefully dance music will come out on top at a Mercury Prize ceremony soon enough. There’s every chance Mainnie will be the one to finally scale the mountain, but it may have to wait another few years.
Chance of winning: Low
BERWYN – WHO AM I [2024, Columbia Records]
The Mercury Prize has shown how much they love a conscious hip-hop winner in recent years, with Dave and Little Simz both taking home gold in 2019 and 2022 respectively. BERWYN’s name doesn’t carry the same level of influence as his contemporaries yet, but he may be the dark horse of this year’s race.
Born in Trinidad, based in London, and having already amassed features for the likes of Fred Again, Gesaffelstein and Steel Banglez, BERWYN explores themes of family, love, hate, and more on WHO AM I. His lyrics are often brutally candid, discussing his background with a matter-of-fact bluntness on highlights such as the a capella ‘DEAR IMMIGRATION’, and packing plenty of detail into just 33 minutes of music. His voice also stands out among his peers for its volatility and range, switching from reverb-soaked pop melodies on one song to a frantic, nasal delivery on the next.
Having released just days before the announcement of the shortlist, and coming from one of the lesser-known nominees, BERWYN would surely be a surprising victor to those who aren’t familiar with his work, but he has all the potential to become a major player in London hip-hop and neo-soul going forward. A win for WHO AM I feels as if it could be one of the more possible upsets of the night, and it would surely cement a new star, but if the bookies and the public are bullish, it might not be BERWYN’s time yet.
Chance of winning: Medium
Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown [2024, Domino Recording Co.]
If Lives Outgrown were released just a few months later, we could have been treated to the poetic result of Beth Gibbons earning her second win exactly 30 years after Portishead’s Dummy took the award.
Unfortunately, double Mercury Prize winners are almost unheard of, with only PJ Harvey pulling off the feat since the event began. As such, it’s hard to hedge your bets on Beth Gibbons, even though her debut solo album is more than deserving of the prize. Lives Outgrown shares very few similarities with the music of Portishead outside of Beth’s vocals, but that unmistakable dark and smoky atmosphere remains. Its bare instrumentals are somehow produced with a palpable depth and nuance for such minimal backing, and Gibbons’ voice is as immaculate as ever above it all, lending to some of the most emotionally impactful performances of 2024.
Musically speaking, Lives Outgrown absolutely deserves to be among the favourites of this year’s line-up, yet history is working against it. There’s a chance that taking such a departure from her Dummy years will give Gibbons a second wind – much in the same way Let England Shake did for Harvey in 2011 – but it’s incredibly rare for lightning to strike twice here. Regardless, it would be a joy to be proven wrong.
Chance of winning: Low (but should be higher)
Cat Burns – early twenties [2024, RCA Records]
After gaining traction through TikTok, where her single ‘Go‘ went viral four years after releasing, Cat Burns has felt ready to emerge as one of Britain’s leading new popstars since early 2022. While she has the vocal chops and the image to back herself up, early twenties doesn’t stick out from the rest of the pop landscape enough to warrant such a major title as ‘Mercury Prize winner’.
early twenties would surely be an inoffensive choice of winner, but in a year with so many more ambitious musical statements, it would be a shocking turn of events for Burns to stand tall. It’s an album that’s perfectly pleasant to listen to, but which feels out of place on a list of boundary-pushing pop crossovers and career statement pieces, as if the committee felt the need to rush something with more mainstream appeal into the books.
This is all meant with no disrespect to Cat Burns herself, as she is clearly talented, and there is a huge market for music of exactly this sound. With stronger deep cuts, a more ambitious angle, and less generalised songwriting, early twenties could probably stand up to the ‘BRAT’s and the ‘Silence Is Loud’s of this year’s prize. As it is, however, it sticks out like a sore thumb on this line-up.
Chance of winning: Low
Charli XCX – BRAT [2024, Atlantic Records]
Despite seeming like one of the more obvious choices, there are few albums more deserving of a Mercury nod than BRAT, the sound-of-the-summer album that impressively managed to conquer the charts, the clubs, and the critics all at once.
It seems like a simple collection of hedonistic dance-pop bangers on the surface, but beneath all the memes and the viral marketing, BRAT is secretly one of the smartest albums of the year. Charli paints a surprisingly deep character study of the stereotypical party girls that populate the UK’s nightlife, while also reflecting on her own status as an artist. After bridging the gap between Top 40 radio and the underground sounds of PC Music for years, BRAT feels like the most readily accessible and true display of her musical goals yet.
Charli was previously nominated for 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now – a hyperpop-tinged highlight of the early pandemic era – but now feels like the right time for her contributions to pop music to be formally recognised. Sometimes being the popular vote feels boring or predictable, but in this case, it’s a mark of respect for 2024’s ‘it’ girl.
Chance of winning: High
CMAT – Crazymad, for Me [2023, AWAL]
Irish singer-songwriter Ciara Thompson has a unique connection to previous nominee Charli XCX, having met the popstar in 2018 at a songwriting advice session, where she was advised to change her approach to music. She now makes an elusive blend of pop and country, with a camp flair, a finger-on-the-pulse sense of humour, and all the smarts to find emphatic success at tonight’s ceremony.
Described as a concept album involving a time-travelling future self stopping a life-ruining relationship, CMAT’s second album won’t be for everyone, but for those willing to lose themselves in it, there’s a great deal of complexity and tact that make it one of 2023’s best told musical stories. Beneath its introspective lyrics and high-concept narrative, there’s plenty of fun to be had with Crazymad, for Me, as its instrumentals rock hard enough and its hooks pop hard enough to make it stick in your mind beyond the depressing subject matter.
While other high-chance picks might pip it to the post, and it doesn’t have the same name recognition as other projects, Crazymad, for Me has all the fundamental elements of a Mercury winner and wouldn’t seem out of place in a line-up of recent victors. Even if it doesn’t take pole position, Thompson has been able to put out two great albums in as many years, and hopefully her knack for consistently entertaining and smart projects continues from here.
Chance of winning: High
Corinne Bailey Rae – Black Rainbows [2023, Thirty Tigers]
Talk about a transformation for the ages. When Corinne Bailey Rae debuted in 2006, she was earmarked for greatness from the start, with a number one debut album in the UK and a timeless signature single – ‘Put Your Records On’. Despite her clear talent, she unfortunately never reached the peaks of her early fame again. Now, 17 years later, Bailey Rae has released Black Rainbows – a shockingly ambitious collage of jazz, R&B, electronic and rock that carves her own path as she enters the next phase of her career.
There’s something admirably rough about Black Rainbows and how earnestly it rejects tradition, swerving noisily from left to right between genres and textures. It ought to feel dizzying, and a little scary, but there’s something oddly comforting about watching an artist embrace their own intricacies that were never noticeable before. If Corinne Bailey Rae continues down this path, she can easily make up for lost time since her breakout and become as essential a musician as she was touted to be upon debuting.
Black Rainbows is an esoteric pick that might not click with the general public immediately, but it has earned every drop of adoration from critics for its bravery and individuality. Corinne Bailey Rae has shed the skin of her early works and emerged as an unexpected iconoclast, whose next move everybody should be anticipating with baited breath. As one of the most creative, chaotic, visceral, and varied albums of the last several years, Black Rainbows would make a hugely deserving winner, and would fit right at home in the record books.
Chance of winning: High
corto.alto – Bad With Names [2023, New Soil]
Historically, the Mercury Prize has been met with criticism for failing to represent particular genres. Last year, Ezra Collective broke the mould by finally taking a jazz record to a win, and Glaswegian project corto.alto will be hoping to continue the trend tonight.
Fronted by multi-instrumentalist Liam Shortall (“corto, alto” translates to “short, tall” in Spanish), the project’s spacy, reverb-laden arrangements are uncompromisingly modern by jazz standards, but remain enchanting throughout. The textures achieved by the brass and string sections on Bad With Names sound otherworldly, demonstrating a production prowess from Shortall that invokes the spirit of modern jazz fusion greats like Flying Lotus on highlights such as the album’s closer. If any projects on the shortlist this year deserve increased attention in the wake of the prize, corto.alto is certainly one to keep on your radar.
In spite of this fact, the Mercury Prize likes to keep its winners varied over the years, and a double bill of jazz victories seems sadly unlikely. Where Ezra Collective capture the simple, feel-good nature of jazz through their palpable chemistry as a group, corto.alto sounds more meditative, subversive, and multi-faceted, which will inherently narrow down their audience from last year’s winners. Anybody looking to continue the search for Britain’s next big jazz act, though, should definitely give Bad With Names a spin.
Chance of winning: Low
English Teacher – This Could Be Texas [2024, Universal]
British music has a long and well-documented history of guitar bands, but its recent years have been signposted by the revival of arthouse post-punk through bands such as Black Country, New Road and Black Midi. Now, with the former replacing its frontman and the latter having recently broken up, there’s a gap in the market for a new British rock group to define the next wave of the country’s constantly evolving rock lineage.
English Teacher are an indie-rock quartet based in Leeds, inheriting much of the sarcastic swagger and surreal lyricism of recent post-punkers, but cut with pop sensibilities and easier instrumentals. While taking inspiration from other notable British indie bands of the post-2000s, they bridge the gap between multiple disparate bubbles of rock music and combine them into something largely agreeable, yet wild enough to remain entertaining. Their Northern charm oozes through on tracks like ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’, with its dry humour and shout-outs to Charlotte Brontë and the Pendle Witches.
This Could Be Texas has all the charisma and wit to make English Teacher a band to keep an eye on, despite how close their presentation borders on a parody of modern indie stereotypes. They’re hardly reinventing the wheel of rock music, but by sticking to tried-and-true formulas and staying in touch with their roots, they offer a comforting middle-ground between eras and subgenres.
Chance of winning: Medium
Ghetts – On Purpose, with Purpose [2024, Warner Music]
15 years into his career, and earning his second nomination with On Purpose, with Purpose, Ghetts is solidifying himself as a veteran of UK hip-hop. Although he hasn’t reached household name status in the same respect as other previous grime nominees, his fourth album states clearly why he deserves to be given his flowers, except it doesn’t make a compelling enough case to take top billing tonight.
On Purpose, with Purpose assembles a deep guestlist of some of grime’s most respected mainstays – Kano, Unknown T, Wretch 32 – while tastefully blending touches of Afrobeats, soul, and gospel. The result is a celebration of the variety of Black British music in the industry today, while also tackling difficult political topics, and occasionally finding room for a victory lap. The result is very compelling, but sometimes bloated or overcooked, and its clashing tones would make it difficult to pick out what it stands for should it win.
Its infectious energy and the veteran status of its contributors makes it a worthy addition to the shortlist this year, but a win for Ghetts would be unexpected. For anyone who has enjoyed previous winners such as Skepta’s Konnichiwa or Dave’s Psychodrama, though, On Purpose, with Purpose is a similarly well-crafted and well-thought-out hip-hop LP.
Chance of winning: Low
Nia Archives – Silence Is Loud [2024, Island Records]
If the judges want to capitalise on the momentum of jungle and DnB’s mainstream presence in the UK, Nia Archives’ debut has the pop appeal and genre crossover potential to be just the ticket.
Designed as a melting pot of rave music and Britpop, Silence Is Loud is an ambitious record that manages to set vulnerable lyrics to a series of party anthems without either side losing their impact. Nia Archives has been largely responsible for renewed mainstream interest in drum and bass, with her pairing of frantic breakbeats and Amy Winehouse-esque crooning seeming bizarre on paper but providing electrifying results in practice. She openly embraces elements of both electronic music’s past and its future, riding the wave of social media virality while raising the profile of those who paved the way for her genre’s success along the way.
While it may not be the most varied album to choose from, with its formula starting to lose a bit of its charm in the closing moments of the tracklist, a victory for Silence Is Loud would put a musical community often overlooked by critics on the map. Most records nowadays embrace digital sounds to some degree, but it’s been over a decade since anything this proudly electronic has been given the award, so maybe it’s time for a change of pace.
Chance of winning: High
The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy [2024, Universal]
It’s hard to talk about success stories of the last calendar year without mentioning The Last Dinner Party, whose meteoric rise could only have happened in this era of music, while their art itself looks to the past for its inspiration.
Having a band that flaunts the influence of baroque pop and chamber music so openly cross over into the mainstream has been a breath of fresh air in a slumping indie-rock landscape. Prelude to Ecstasy is an exciting introduction to a band who are likely to become mainstays of their scene, with an instantly recognisable look, commanding lead vocals from Abigail Morris. The album deals in themes of womanhood, power, lust, and queerness, all with a theatrical edge that makes each narrative beat stand out that much more. It captures everything you need to know about the group, while still leaving room for growth on future projects and avoiding an early burnout.
If there’s anything working against The Last Dinner Party’s chances, it might be the speed of their rise to fame itself. The main purposes of the Mercury Prize are marking the year’s cultural zeitgeist, recognising a legacy artist’s contributions to music, or most often, giving a platform to breakout artists. For a band who have already won the Rising Star BRIT Award, opened for the Rolling Stones, and have over a hundred million streams on their biggest Spotify hit, how necessary is another platform like this for their continued success? If anything, there’s a chance a Mercury nod could hamper their momentum, as some listeners have already met their early-career dominance with raised eyebrows and hushed tones of concern. There’s no evidence to substantiate any claims being made about their promotion, but it’s hard to argue that they’d benefit from the award as much as other artists, despite the quality of the music present on their debut project.
Chance of winning: Medium
Record Scratch 