The annual awards ceremony will name the winner on Sept. 8.
Harry Styles, Little Simz, Wet Leg, Jessie Buckley, and Sam Fender are among this year’s Mercury Prize nominees. The annual prize, Britain’s most prestigious music award, announced its initial shortlist of 12 albums earlier today.
Little Simz, up for her LP Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, is one of two members of the shortlist who has been previously nominated. Her third album, Grey Area, was nominated in 2019. Guitarist Bernard Butler, who won the second-ever Mercury Prize with Suede in 1993, is also nominated again, this time for his collaboration with Buckley on For All Our Days That Tear The Heart.
“Sometimes I Might Be Introvert has been shortlisted for the @MercuryPrize 22. so grateful,” Little Simz wrote on Twitter. “Love to my brother Inflo for always backing it, and pouring love in abundance into the music. And to YOU, the people. Thank you for the continued support on this album.”
Styles, meanwhile, is up for Harry’s House, released earlier this year. Isle of Wight indie-rock duo Wet Leg received a nod for their highly-anticipated, self-titled debut album.
“We’re so freakin lucky that we got to make the album that we made,” Wet Leg wrote on Twitter. “These past couple of years have been full of surprises and unexpected adventures. Here’s perhaps one of our fave surprises so far…Our debut album has been shortlisted for a @MercuryPrize !?”
Other nominees include Yard Act, Joy Crookes, Kojey Radical, Self Esteem, Nova Twins, Gwenno, and Fergus McCreadie.
“Getting down to 12 albums this year was not easy, simply because there were so many remarkable ones to choose from,” the Mercury Prize judges said in a statement. “That serves as proof that British and Irish music thrives during unsettled periods in history, with the albums chosen covering everything from imaginative pop to pioneering rap to Cornish language folk-rock. We feel that these 12 amazing albums each have something to say artistically and socially, all in their own unique, enriching ways.”
The Mercury Prize awards ceremony will be held Sept. 8 at London’s Eventim Apollo. Tickets for the event are available now.
Previous Mercury Prize winners include Pulp, James Blake, Skepta, and PJ Harvey. Last year, Arlo Parks took home the award for her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams.
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