Hack at work.
Killing Bono
"The best book I have ever read about trying to make it in the music business" - Elton John
"A fantastic book, which manages the difficult trick of being simultaneously very funny and very sad." - Bob Geldof
"I was Neil McCormick's fan in school. He was much cooler than me, a much better writer and I thought he'd make a much better rock star. I was wrong on one count. He's written a great book" - Bono
Mercury Prize: does anyone actually want to win it?
July 20th, 2010
Gorillaz reflect on their narrow escape from the curse of the Mercurys
Well, here’s that Mercury Prize list. I got six out of twelve in my predictions, so half marks: Corinne Bailey Rae, Laura Marling, Paul Weller, Villagers, Wild Beasts and the XX. I’m not particularly surprised by any of the other six, apart from the Kit Downes Trio, which takes the annual token jazz album spot with a record that has had no impact outside of its tightly enclosed genre whatsoever.
But it is hard to argue with the quality of the contenders. It is a more substantial and, in many ways, more mainstream selection than last year’s list, which I think is down to the simple fact that there has been a lot of interesting music released over the last year that has crossed from the margins to the mainstream. The only question worth posing is whether this absolutely represents the best of British and Irish music from the past year:
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