The official annual STN Mercury Prize nomination predictions post

Announced tomorrow: Adele, Anna Calvi, Elbow, Everything Everything, The Horrors, James Blake, Katy B, King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, Metronomy, PJ Harvey, Wild Beasts and something jazzy we don't know. Thanks for playing.

Collective decision

A paucity of interesting sideshow in the Brit awards nominees announced today brings up one stop-in-your-tracks name - Animal Collective, nominated for two of the International gongs (as have Empire Of The Sun, a project which may have had a good amount of label dollarage behind it but hardly took off) and allowing Domino to laud "progressive, forward-thinking, unique and beautiful music that doesn’t pander to the corporate systems", an odd thing to highlight when it's just been nominated for two Brit awards.

Obviously, they shouldn't prepare a speech, much as we'd like to know what it contains. What they've fallen into is the curse of the fifth nominee, the moment when the committee realise they're one populist name short and send one of the executives off to see what they've got on in the office. All these people got actual Brit nominations:

- Richard Hawley (2008 British Male)
- The Eagles (2008 international group and album. The Eagles! In 2008!)
- Bob Dylan (2007 international male)
- Cat Power (2007 international female)
- Tom Waits (2005 international male)
- Brian Wilson (2005 international male)
- The Thrills (2004 international breakthrough)
- The Coral (2004 best album, which seems a little highfalutin for a band like them)
- Aphex Twin (2002 British male)
- Zero 7 (2002 British breakthrough)
- Van Morrison (2000 and 1996 British male)
- Wiseguys (2000 British breakthrough, in a dance music-laced list)
- Ann Lee (2000 pop act. Pop must have been in a worse way than anyone thought that year)
- Neil Finn (1999 international male)
- Propellerheads (1999 British breakthrough. Belle & Sebastian were far more unlikely but actually won, which spoils the narrative)
- Mick Hucknall (1997 British male, presumably just for the sake of it)
- Lightning Seeds (1997 British group. How out of place that looks)
- The Tony Rich Project (1997 international breakthrough)
- Jimmy Nail (1996 British male)
- Vanessa Mae (1996 British female, which is a wide definition of the art)

What we also want to draw your attention to is the nomination set for the best Brits performance of the last thirty years, oddly 00s slanted:

Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive/How Deep is Your Love (1997)
Bros - I Owe you Nothing (1989)
Coldplay - Clocks (2003)
Eurythmics & Stevie Wonder - Angel (1999)
Girls Aloud - The Promise (2009)
Kanye West - Gold Digger (2006)
Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of my Head (2002)
Michael Jackson - Earth Song (1996)
Paul McCartney - Live & Let Die (2008)
Pet Shop Boys - Go West (1994)
Robbie Williams & Tom Jones - The Full Monty Medley (1998)
Scissor Sisters - Take Your Mama (2005)
Spice Girls - Wannabe/Who Do You Think You Are (1997)
Take That - Beatles Medley I Wanna Hold Your Hand/Hard Day's Night/She Loves Me (1994)
The Who - Who Are You (1988)

Yes, it really does refer to that classic Beatles song She Loves Me. And no, we don't know that "classic" Bros performance either. And yes, it does include the awry Jacko set-piece, although it's worth recalling that the TV director and seemingly all reporters missed it on the night and it was left to the papers to report events, which they did by condemning Jarvis for attacking children.

This is nothing but a goddamn popularity contest

With the Brits being posited as "the year manufactured pop struck back" to avoid the record industry having to publicly admit that not much happened on record in 2007, the NME awards had the chance in their nominations to reseal their position as the proper alternative after several years of major award shortlists mirroring those of what was set up as the enemy. Instead, everyone has decided to retreat to what they know like a commercial radio station's playlisting software. Feel the danger and vitality, but before that look at these categories:

Best British Band: Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles, The Cribs, Klaxons, Muse

Oasis actually did something this year and get repaid by being dumped from their Best British Band nomination birthright. There's gratitude. Interesting to see no Radiohead, given a) they turn up for NME awards, or at least did last time they were about, and b) it demonstrates something tangible, nay, inscrutable about the modern NME readership.

Best International Band: Arcade Fire, Foo Fighters, The Killers, Kings Of Leon, My Chemical Romance

God, what a vanilla selection - ver Fire aside, it's 'edgy' and 'alternative' as Ken Bruce might deem it. Even the Brits get it together enough to nominate Cat Power and Feist.

Best New Band: The Enemy, Foals, Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong, The Pigeon Detectives, The Wombats

Right, three in and we're already calling bollocks on the transparency of the voting results. There is no way that Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong, currently setting unique markers for bad live reviews, message board hatred, pissing off journalists who are attempting to write puff pieces and not seeing huge major label investment reflected in playlisting or any wider interest at all, would garner enough independent votes to make the top five in such a category without the guiding hand of the NME having a second spot on their tour starting this week to justify.

Best Live Band: Arctic Monkeys, The Cribs, Kaiser Chiefs, Muse, My Chemical Romance

And we doubt the Cribs would have got in here had they not had a slot to fulfil. Otherwise it's 'bands that play enormodomes' as much as 'bands that put on a show'. A month later and Led Zeppelin might have made it in.

Best Solo Artist: Kate Nash, Jack Penate, Jamie T, Amy Winehouse, Patrick Wolf

Patrick Wolf had an odd 2007 in which he decided to take the T4 route to becoming a Proper Pop Star, hanging around with Peaches and Kelly, famously duetting with Charlotte Church losing all shreds of his unique worldview in favour of wearing some cut-off lederhosen and jumping around a bit. The International Board Of Proper Pop Stardom responded by asking what the hell he was playing at with those sequencer settings and sent him away with a flea in his ear. What happens next, as he is by all accounts already working on a fourth album he once said he'd never make, will be fascinating. Far more fascinating than trawling through the rest of this selection, in any case.

Best Album: Favourite Worst Nightmare, In Rainbows, Myths Of The Near Future, Shotters Nation, Sound Affects we’ll Live And Die In These Towns

Myths Of The Near Future even most Klaxons fans had given up as a badly produced, uneven, full of filler (although why do most single out Isle Of Her, one of two decent non-singles on it?) collection, then did a communal 360 when the NME decided it was album of the year just so they could go "look at our man mashed on the breakfast telly!" yet again. How big of him. Shotters Nation meanwhile went down only as 'an improvement', and only then because it had a proper producer, Stephen Street from the nineties. Next year, Linkin Park achieve critical parity with an album produced by Roy Thomas Baker.

Best Track: Fluorescent Adolescent, FluX, Let’s Dance To Joy Division, Lord Don’t Slow Me Down, Men’s Needs

We thought everyone (and we mean that word in terms of our own little closeted worldview) hated Flux, then saw people dancing to it on the PA between bands last week. We do know people hated Lord Don't Slow Me Down, so this must be the bargaining chip to get Noel to turn up. He might say something. This is the Cribs' third of four nominations. Did we miss a meeting?

Best Video: D.A.N.C.E., Flux, Golden Skans, Teddy Picker, Teenagers

Teddy Picker was a performance video, Teenagers a performance video with cheerleaders. Flux had people dressed as robots in it, but no more convincingly than in the average Beastie Boys video. You can't really look beyond D.A.N.C.E., so they will.

Best Dancefloor Filler: Atlantis To Interzone, D.A.N.C.E., Flux, Hummer, Let’s Dance To Joy Division

AKA the Hello, We Have A Club, Remember? And Branded DJs! You can't dance to Let’s Dance To Joy Division any more than you can dance to Dead Souls.

Best Music DVD: Amy Winehouse - I Told You I Was Trouble, Lord Don’t Slow Me Down, Nirvana Unplugged In New York, The Song Remains The Same (Special Edition), Up The Shambles

Two reissues. Wonderful.

Best Live Event: Glastonbury, Muse At Wembley Stadium, Reading And Leeds Festival, T In The Park, V Festival

Don't be too obvious, will you. It's from here that it all goes a little Smash Hits.

Hero Of The Year: Matt Bellamy, Pete Doherty, Noel Fielding, Ryan Jarman, Thom Yorke

Above and beyond the call of duty, all. Especially Ryan Jarman, who made a brave stand against the corporate indie hordes. He did this at the Mean Fiddler-invested, heavily sponsored Glastonbury festival, the first of a number of major festivals his band played in 2007 which helped secure their place on the NME Awards tour. He's virtually Billy Childish. If you're surprised to find Noel Fielding has worked his way into the Shockwaves nation's hearts, imagine how Julian Barrett, who actually writes the music and at least half of the script of the Boosh, feels. Still, good to know that Thom came up with the pay what you feel model all by himself.

Villain Of The Year: Tony Blair, Johnny Borrell, Gordon Brown, George W Bush, Amy Winehouse

Shame they didn't bite the bullet and call it Most Very Horrible Thing. We'd have voted for spiders. Instead, a male rocker has heroin issues and is nominated for Hero Of The Year, while a female non-rocker has heroin issues and is nominated for Villain Of The Year. Paging Camille Paglia!

Best Dressed: Pete Doherty, Noel Fielding, Kate Nash, Alex Turner, Gerard Way
Worst Dressed: Johnny Borrell, Pete Doherty, Mika, Gerard Way, Amy Winehouse

Nobody knows the criteria at all, do they? They might as well have gone the whole hog and put a Best/Worst Haircut award in.

Best Album Artwork: Because Of The Times, Favourite Worst Nightmare, Sawdust, Send Away The Tigers, The Good The Bad And The Queen

Worth doing.

Best Radio Show: Russell Brand, Zane Lowe, Chris MoyleS, Colin Murray, Jo Whiley

Every so often a Courteeners fan will draw themselves to their virtual full height and declare "I think you'll find Jo Whiley knows about new music!" No, Huw Stephens knows about new music. Jo Whiley knows about whatever the major labels are foisting on her now as bands creating a natural buzz - yeah, right - and gets an audible frisson of rulebreaking excitement whenever she plays Gallows.

Worst Album: All The Lost Souls, Blackout, Life In Cartoon Motion, Spirit, The Trick To Life

It's those major labels, isn't it, always ploughing their money into heavy promotion of the lowest common denominator for unthinking plebs. Pause to allow irony to sink in having read all the categories so far, continue.

Worst Band: 30 Seconds To Mars, Fall Out Boy, The Hoosiers, My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco

The War On Emo may outlive us all.

Best TV Show: Heroes, The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Skins

To explain: The Mighty Boosh had Noel Fielding in it. Buzzcocks had Noel Fielding in it. The IT Crowd had Noel Fielding in it (and Game Of Pricks playing out one episode, by the by). Skins had people who want to be Noel Fielding in it. Heroes is the compromise choice once it emerged putting The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year in would have been a bit obvious.

Best Film: Control, Hot Fuzz, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, The Simpsons Movie, Superbad

Some people vote for an Anton Corbijn arthouse movie, some for Superbad. If only every category was as wide ranging.

Sexiest Man: Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, Julian Barrett, Noel Fielding, Nicky Wire, Patrick Wolf

Even in this metrosexual age nobody's really sure across the board what constitutes male sexiness, hence this compromise of a list. Unlike this one...

Sexiest Woman: Jenny Lewis, Kylie Minogue, Rhianna, Hayley Williams, Rachael Yamagata

And so Rachael Yamagata receives her first ever NME acknowledgement, if perhaps not in the way she intended. These two were voted for online by the expedient of flashing up photos and text going "go on, you fancy her, don't you?", but even then we can't imagine the Yamagata Myspace hordes descending. Kylie turned up at the awards a few years ago and the press covered nothing else at all from them the next day.

Best Venue: Carling Academy Brixton, Glasgow Barrowlands, London Astoria, Manchester Apollo, Wembley Stadium

Wembley? How easily pleased are these voters?

Best Website: Bebo, Facebook, Last.fm, Myspace, YouTube

Ah, Web 2.0. And note no Pitchfork, Drowned In Sound or such, because there are no other online music news sources than nme.com. Repeat. There are no other online music news sources than nme.com.

Best Band Blog: Foals, Lightspeed Champion, Lily Allen, Radiohead, The Streets

Feeling sorry for yourself is evidently the new black. Literally, if we're talking emo. Actually Foals' is good, Dev is as pleasingly rambling as any LJer, Radiohead's is inscrutable, and the Streets' one has a really strong street team.

Best Music Blog: The Hype Machine, The Modern Age, Nothing But Green Lights, Spinner, Stereogum

It's alright, we'll cope. Seriously, very well done to Mike NBGL, who seems to have achieved this without having to beg (he was featured in the magazine a couple of years ago, but then so was Dominic Masters) and is consequently ranked for now alongside The Hype Machine, which isn't even a blog.

Recurring Shockwaves

As we always ask rhetorically when the NME Shockwaves Awards nominations roll round, did the Brits committee change to suit their wares or did the NME fall into line with more commercial thinking? Whatever, here's this year's categories, with the added bonus of an interactive game of trying to spot the moments when we really stopped being arsed:

Best British Band: Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles, Kasabian, Muse, Oasis
Oasis, there, in their glorious year of a greatest hits album. Their fans will always, always have enough sway to get them a nomination in this sort of thing. In fact you could say the same for all five bands, pretty much.

Best International Band: CSS, The Killers, My Chemical Romance, The Strokes, We Are Scientists
Whereas over here things are much more confused. We Are Scientists' popularity in Britain seems to be alien with all logic, and indeed we'd suggest their profile outside a microsection of NME target market is still somewhere akin to negligible. CSS? Clerical error, surely. The Strokes are the only international band most seem to have heard of. This one's MCR's, because it's where their fans will be at their most vociferous.

Best Solo Artist: Lily Allen, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Jarvis Cocker, Jamie T, Thom Yorke
See, they don't need the token rapper this year with Jamie T about. This could go anywhere, really, although Sam's surely in because a combination of hype, goodwill and being Thom Yorke split 95% of the vote.

Best New Band: The Fratellis, The Horrors, Klaxons, The Kooks, The View
Doesn't the future look promising? Even the most, for which read only, exciting band there are taking a different bit of early 80s inspiration from everyone else while pretending it's early 90s inspiration. Sponsored by Radio 1, which explains that.

Best Live Band: Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles, Kasabian, Muse, My Chemical Romance
Note to steering committee: you might actually need to turn up to gigs occasionally to claim to be a great live band. Surely this is Muse's to lose. They have lasers.

Best Album: Black Holes And Revelations, Empire, Sam's Town, The Black Parade, Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not
Or Whatever You Say I Am..., as the NME's own website lists it, which certainly demonstrates something. They'll have to get that one right on the night, as it's the only thing here that really set pulses racing nationwide. We mean, Muse are alright but we fear the brow of the hill is approaching fast.

Best Track: Atlantis To Interzone, Bang Bang You're Dead, Supermassive Black Hole, Wasted Little DJs, When You Were Young
Dirty Pretty Things' impact seems to have evaporated - the album didn't pull up end of year review trees, Carl's gone to ground (presumably writing the next album, but y'know) and it's basically Can't Stand Me Now without the right to reply. Wasted Little DJs's presence should remind him of happier times, at least. Essentially, how will they like their sounds - Killers wide or Muse wider?

Best Video: Bones, Empire, Here It Goes Again, I Write Sins Not Tragedies, Sheena Is A Parasite
It's worth wondering how much of those few weeks of Horrors hype before the NME cottoned on to how nobody was actually arsed about them was driven by the Sheena Is A Parasite video which came a month or two earlier and was very much of a piece at the time. Obviously this is the first and last UK award OK Go will ever pick up.

Best Music DVD: Arctic Monkeys - Scummy Man, Dirty Pretty Things - Puffing On A Coffin Nail, Foo Fighters - Skin And Bones, Maximo Park - Found On Film, My Chemical Romance - Life On The Murder Scene
Bloody hell, look at those titles. Do you care?

Best Live Event: Carling Weekend, Download, Oxegen, T In The Park, V2006
So much for Glastoless sharing the love around the place a bit.

Best Film: Borat, Casino Royale, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
We were amused by the BBC website's concept that current US number one film Epic Movie "lampoons movies including The Da Vinci Code and Borat". Yeah, that Borat comes across so seriously, he needs taking down a peg or two by some people who co-wrote Police Academy of the Noughties Scary Movie. We don't do films, so you pick one.

Best TV Show: Extras, Gonzo, Lost, The Mighty Boosh, Never Mind The Buzzcocks
Bad luck, Simon Schama. Buzzcocks has become immeasurably better since Lamarr decided to stop pretending he was arsed, but let's get a sense of perspective here. Gonzo won last year, which surely was a fix given nobody outside this sphere of reference has heard of it.

Best Radio Show: Lauren Laverne, Zane Lowe, Chris Moyles, Colin Murray, Jo Whiley
Same as last year (bar the uncoupling of Colin from Edith) but with Whiley replacing Lamacq. Progress, it says here. Lauren for us, if only because XFM breakfast is the first piece of media she's done that hasn't almost immediately collapsed in on itself.

Hero Of The Year: Carl Barat, Pete Doherty, Faris Rotter, Alex Turner, Gerard Way
Not quite sure how any of these entirely qualify as heroes, or indeed who they're supposed to be heroes to. At least you could make a case for Geldof last year.

Villain Of The Year: Tony Blair, Johnny Borrell, George Bush, Pete Doherty, Gerard Way
Not that it was ever not going to be Blair, Bush and Doherty plus two, but why is Borrell singled out among his many loathsome contemporaries? Are there that many Luke Pritchard admirers?

Sexiest Man: Carl Barat, Matt Bellamy, Pete Doherty, Brandon Flowers, Gerard Way
They dropped these last year, and being completely unworkable and never quite managing to make sense of its own existence, even for irony purposes, when held under our sort of microscope we were all the better for it. Now they're back and trying to convince us that Doherty, an exact cross between Jack Wild and Baron Greenback, is quantifiably sexy. Carl, surely, given the rest of the contenders are a hard scaring sci-fi loon, the year's most ill advised moustache wearer and the emo Alan Smith, when he was at Leeds. When Alan Smith was at Leeds, not Gerard Way. Although who really knows?

Sexiest Woman: Lily Allen, Beth Ditto, Kate Jackson, Kate Moss, Karen O
So Kate Moss now qualifies, which would only make sense were Scarlett Johanssen also nominated, and surely that's a brazen attempt to get back in Lily and Beth's good books. Of course, being a) male and b) catastrophically indie, most of our own favourites, as well as being more suitable for 'Cutest Fringe On A Woman' than 'Sexiest Woman', never stood a chance of being within a metric mile of nomination by dint of being mad (Chan Marshall), deliberately obtuse and possibly made of fragile porcelain for all we know (Joanna Newsom), liable to rip your head off at two hundred paces, and probably might when stagediving (Emily Haines), next to unheard of outside North America despite being in a million projects (Neko Case) or pretending they don't have a name more suited to a veteran actress in an ITV Sunday 9pm light comedy drama (Rose Pipette - look it up).

Best Dressed: Carl Barat, Russell Brand, Pete Doherty, Brandon Flowers, Faris Rotter
Worst Dressed: Lily Allen, Johnny Borrell, Russell Brand, Pete Doherty, Faris Rotter
We're sure this says something profound about the pudding end of the awards, besides proving again that nobody has the first clue how to approach this one on the voting form. Someone taking fashion advice from both Brand and Rotter, who appears to have given up rights to the surname Badwan that he's, well, used right up until the NME Cool List, would fear for their lives every time they crossed at a pelican crossing after dark, however good they'd be as a Stars In Their Eyes Robert Smith. Brandon best, because we like a man in a well cut waistcoat, Borrell for worst, because the album cover proves he's the fourth best dressed man in his own band. Are we wrong to feel better about Andy Burrows since we noticed he's wearing a Stiff Records T-shirt on the cover? Please don't tell us they sell them in Top Shop, we may not be able to take the heartbreak.

Worst Album: Alright Still, Razorlight, Rudebox, The Black Parade, Twelve Stops And Home
Actually, what's with the turning against Razorlight? Sure, they're popular now and that, but they were doing Parkinson two years ago and nobody minded then.

Worst Band: The Feeling, The Horrors, The Kooks, Panic! At The Disco, Razorlight
Now that Girls Aloud and Sugababes are cool this one's seemingly constructed from a lucky dip. Babyshambles got nominated last year, and it's not as if Pete's 2006 was that much of a PR improvement.

Best Venue: Brixton Academy, Glasgow Barrowlands, London KOKO, London Astoria, Manchester Apollo
Meh.

Best Website Not Including nme.com: DrownedinSound, Last.FM, Myspace, Pitchfork, YouTube
Zonino! NME take the subtle advice after winning this one year after year after year to heart, and as a result it'd be something akin to an open field were it not clear how far Myspace is going to piss it. Note the American interloper in there, which again tells you something about the way we're all heading in this thing called sarcastic music news.

Brit pack

To the annual bonfire of the vanities that is the Brit Awards, this year promising to be more outlandish, unpredictable and entertaining than ever, in the same way Stalin promised civil liberties and free elections across the wartime Eastern Bloc. Let's have a look at this year's marketing opportunities:

British Male Solo Artist: James Morrison, Jarvis Cocker, Lemar, Paolo Nutini, Thom Yorke
Radiohead have never won a Brit, but Lemar's got two. Read into that what you will. Thom and Jarvis' presences seem a little like a sop to divide up the Heart FM audience pleasers. The idea Lemar might have three Brit awards seems a trifle silly, so put the house on it being taken home by Nutini, Del Monte's new Nutini.









Just us?

British Female Solo Artist: Amy Winehouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, Jamelia, Lily Allen, Nerina Pallot
No outright makeweights in there at all, unlike usual, even if Bailey Rae didn't become the globe straddling megastar everyone assumed she'd be this time last year. We don't mind Pallot, who penned a lengthy critique of Polydor's A&R man on an industry message board just before they dropped her, and we quite liked the original mix of Everybody's Gone To War. The winner will depend on how coherent they want the speech to be, and thus may depend on how far into the night this award is placed. It'll be Lily, just so the papers have something to write about. It's a social networking site that new acts can upload music to, we hear.

British Group: Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Muse, Razorlight, Snow Patrol
Oh, so Snow Patrol do technically count, then, what with essentially being Irish and that. Hard to muster much excitement about this, in all honesty, as nobody's going to sweep the board from this sort of position. Will the Arctics be there, as every two-bob reporter will query?

British Album: Back To Black, Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not, Alright Still, Black Holes And Revelations, Eyes Open
Of course the Monkeys won an award last year on the back of their album, such is the way of radio block voting, of which more shortly. Prediction: whoever wins the above won't win this. More helpful prediction: see first sentence.

British Single: Put Your Records On, Fill My Little World, You Give Me Something, She Moves In Her Own Way, A Moment Like This, Smile, America, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker, Chasing Cars, Patience, All Time Love
Not sure if this is the usual selection of the year's best UK-based sellers but we do know commercial radio listeners are doing the initial voting, followed by a live vote on the night (it's modern television, remember, so it must be interactive. Media, do your own work occasionally!) so that'll be Gary Lightbody trying to look humbled.

British Breakthrough Act: Corinne Bailey Rae, The Fratellis, James Morrison, The Kooks, Lily Allen
The reason for the 'breakthrough' soubriquet (rather than 'new' tag, which was still applicable when Belle & Sebastian won with their third album) was that the nominated acts were adding something new to the music scene. That's at the very least three of those ruled out, then. Chosen by Radio 1 listeners, and a check of that station's silly Top 40 Bands Of 2006 list reveals it's the Fratellis' to lose.

British Live Act: George Michael, Guillemots, Kasabian, Muse, Robbie Williams
Hark, the sound of token gestures. Just because they've played live gigs doesn't mean they're necessarily a great live act. Good to see Guillemots, but no chance. You'd think Muse would piss it, but it's been left to Radio 2 voters just to make sure Robbie gets something. Don't bother, BPI, he won't turn up.

International Male Solo Artist: Beck, Bob Dylan, Damien Rice, Jack Johnson, Justin Timberlake
Well, this is clearly a wide open field and in no way a hot tabloid favourite plus four for ballast. One of our favourite moments of televised Brits was when Dylan was last nominated and every nominee in this category got screamed at by the overexcitable crowd... except for what was quite clearly mass nervous shuffling when Zimmerman's features appeared on the big screen. And if that seems like an odd name to throw into the middle of a set of nominees...

International Female Solo Artist: Beyonce, Cat Power, Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado, Pink
Best not to prepare a speech, Chan. Really, what the hell is Dane Bowers going to do when asked to comment on her on the preview shows? Well, we know what he'll do, he'll go "what, Cat Deeley's got a record out? Eh? Eh?" Oh, it's Nelly's to lose.

International Group: The Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley, The Killers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Scissor Sisters
Tricky to call, apart from that it won't be ver Lips as they've not been nominated elsewhere. The Chilis won't be there, the Scissors have already had the Brit plaudits, the Killers could be seen as too Americana and Gnarls Barkley as too unpredictable. A score draw, everybody goes home unhappy.

International Album: Modern Times, St Elsewhere, FutureSex/LoveSounds, Sam's Town, Ta-Dah
Again, there's a very real chance that of the four that aren't Dylan at least two will take the speech opportunity to praise him. Take that, Brits School kids. Obviously Sam's Town will take it, as the Killers are performing.

International Breakthrough Act: Gnarls Barkley, Orson, The Raconteurs, Ray Lamontagne, Wolfmother
You'd imagine only Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse have a chance here, but this is the Brits. If anyone's going to show Britain up with a vote for Lamontagne, it'll be the Brits committee, which is why it's lucky it's voted for by MTV viewers. Yeah, apparently MTV still has a music ethos as opposed to a "laugh at the teenage American girls, go on!" ethos.

Outstanding Contribution To Music: Oasis
Great, we can all watch something else at the end. Maybe Guigsy and Bonehead will come back, like a Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame induction.

Half and half

Well, six out of twelve ain't bad. And Neil McCormack thinks the list is rubbish, which proves how well the judges have done, doesn't it? And shouldn't inflation have increased the prize pot from £20,000 long ago?

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Well, of course. Another two months of They Were Off Myspace They Were articles ahead, then. Not a lot of hype around their new single as yet, is there?

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ballad Of The Broken Seas
Campbell's songs, but watch for the 'but he's American!' bandwagon grow should it come anywhere near bookmaker favouritism. At least she of all people can becalm him.

Editors - The Back Room
Isn't Edith Bowman on the judging panel? Anyway, it's not going to win and we found this a hugely inconsistent record bar the singles, although last track Distance is a corker.

Guillemots - Through The Windowpane
Let Iain F and ourselves dance arm in arm amongst the lilies! On reflection maybe extending Blue Will Still Be Blue to five minutes still unaccompanied by anything but Fyfe's battery powered keyboard wasn't a great idea, but what an avalanche of ideas there is at work here.

Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
The most South Yorkshire man in Britain's elegant balladry caused national outbreaks of wistfulness across much of last year and landed him a top 20 position in our blogger poll. Romance is what it used to be.

Hot Chip - The Warning
Only just realised the subtly simplistic greatness of Over And Over round here, so must check this out at some stage despite not being overly keen on the earlier stuff. Could this be the supposed outsider that ends up second favourite come the announcement?

Muse - Black Holes And Revelations
So much for our idea that this would somehow be too obvious. There seems to be a substantial amount of Bliss-type sequencing going on on the tracks we've heard, which we suppose counts as advancement.

Zoe Rahman - Melting Pot
Ah, 2006's Seth Lakeman/Joanna McGregor. A jazz pianist who won Best Jazz Album at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards - is that your doing, Kenneth Clarke? - we're going to have to hear her before passing further comment. Won't win, obviously.

Lou Rhodes - Beloved One
Oh, you have, she used to be in Lamb. This is this year's self-financed entry as well as this year's folk nominee, pastoral pickings over her spectral voice. Won't win, but will pick up plenty of other support.

Scritti Politti - White Bread, Black Beer
Ooh, we look forward to seeing how Radio 1 plays this one on the night, assuming they don't recall Green Gartside's guest spot on the last Kylie album. We've been shamefully late to this, and what an extraordinarily put together work it is. Go on, play live on the night.

Sway - This Is My Demo
Simon Frith, up your speed! Everyone thought Plan B would get the urban nod, but instead it's the Mobo winner who has far more prestige than sales or wider publicity (cf all British rappers ever). Confusing title, deeply disturbing single in Little Derek, clearly something interesting going on here.

Thom Yorke - The Eraser
So much for the low-key aspect. If this wins, does Yorke himself or the whole band, who've been nominated three times before, suffer The Curse? This is his electronic meanderings side project, an angle which does suggest the next Radiohead album might be ten three minute sunny, hook-laden pop songs.

So there you go. Reading back through all the previous nominees always kills a good five minutes, we find. Meanwhile Popjustice, of course, have their own Twenty Quid Music Prize nominee list out. G'wan the Biology!

Now hear this! Now hear this!

Tomorrow, 18th July, at 11.30am the Mercury Music Prize 2006 nominees are announced, and after our 7/12 prediction hit rate last year we can announce in advance that we believe/guess these will be: Arctic Monkeys, Corinne Bailey Rae, David Gilmour, Guillemots, Hot Chip, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Jim Moray, Lily Allen, Plan B, Richard Hawley, Scritti Politti and Spiers & Boden. Thank you for listening.

A Brit on the side

Time, then, to look at the nominees for this year's Brit Awards, the annual event where labels spend far too much on otherwise simple live performances and the only worthwhile events are only reported on three days later:

Best British album: Aerial, Back To Bedlam, Demon Days, Employment, X&Y
The first of five mentions for the Chiefs and the guardsman. Good to see the Kate Bush nomination of cliche has got in, although you'd have to say it's fair enough in a year when she's actually released something. Probable winner: Kaisers.

British male solo artist: Antony and the Johnsons, Ian Brown, James Blunt, Robbie Williams, Will Young
Oh, don't start the "but he's American!" argument again, even if the steering group seem to imagine And The Johnsons is just his imagination, like in the film Harvey (there are permanent Johnsons, a string section and guitarist as we recall) Ian Brown gets nominated for this every single year. Probable winner: Robbie, just because he'd have to have something.

British female solo artist: Natasha Bedingfield, Kate Bush, Charlotte Church, Katie Melua, KT Tunstall
They think highly of Natasha in America, you understand, even if they've been sidelined here. What chance the much discussed other musical Bedingfields now? Probable winner: Bush.

British group: Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Gorillaz, Hard-Fi, Kaiser Chiefs
You or us could have named four of these twelve months ago, assuming we'd been told who was releasing albums in 2005. Probable winner: Coldplay, because they're going to be there.

British single (Voted by UK commercial radio listeners): Is This The Way To Amarillo?, Push The Button, Speed Of Sound, That's My Goal, You're Beautiful
One of those wasn't even a British single this year. We thought the nominees were automatically picked from the five most commercial radio played UK hits of the year, but That's My Goal can't have been played that much, and while four of them are four of the five biggest selling homegrown singles of the year (Mr Red Penguin has the top 200) Speed Of Sound is well done. Probable winner: That's My Goal, because it's the most recent

British breakthrough act (Voted by Radio 1 listeners and the Brits Academy): Arctic Monkeys, James Blunt, Kaiser Chiefs, KT Tunstall, Magic Numbers
Hang on, what are the Academy doing here? Getting ready to change the leader just in case ver Monkeys don't show up? Probable winner: Arctic Monkeys if purely on votes, Kaisers if seasonally adjusted.

British urban act (Voted by MTV Base viewers and the Brits Academy): Craig David, Dizzee Rascal, Kano, Lemar, Ms Dynamite
It's five years now since Craig David was nominated for a load of Brits and won nothing, and performing halfway through the ceremony he broke into a freestyle rap which included the line "no brits for CD". How did he know then? At least Joss Stone's not qualified. Probable winner: Lemar

British rock act (Voted by Kerrang! TV viewers and the Brits Academy): Franz Ferdinand, Hard-Fi, Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, Oasis
All Kerrang! target market, of course. Probable winner: Oasis if the 3am Girls reckon they'll turn up, Kaisers otherwise

Pop act (Voted by CD:UK viewers, The Sun Bizarre column readers and O2/Motorola customers): James Blunt, Kelly Clarkson, Katie Melua, Madonna, Westlife
Surely it should have been split into UK and international categories long before now to avoid confusion that doesn't already come into play by the redefinition of the word 'pop' exhibited here - the nominations could easily have been Charlotte Church, Girls Aloud, McFly, Nelly and Sugababes and it wouldn't have been any weaker for what it's been set up as. Probably stronger without Melua, actually. Probable winner: Westlife. It's a CD:UK and teen girls on phones vote, remember

British live act (Voted by Radio 2 and a panel of selectors): Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, Oasis, KT Tunstall
Well, that was worth dropping Best Video for. The judging panel, via whoever was on it from the Independent, were supposedly furious that they'd been forced against their will to nominate acts who had played actual paid-for gigs that people could easily go to and not Pink Floyd. Diddums. Probable winner: Coldplay

International male solo artist: Beck, Jack Johnson, John Legend, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West
A category that's often good for an unlikely nomination or two, although this year we won't get the Brits preview show talking heads being asked for their opinions on Tom Waits unlike 2005, worse luck. Probable winner: Kanye, and he'll be there

International female solo artist: Bjork, Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson, Missy Elliott, Madonna
Bjork seems to get into this one suspiciously often. Probable winner: Madonna

International album: American Idiot, Confessions On A Dancefloor, Funeral, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, Late Registration
Yes, Funeral, and you've not heard the last of Arcade Fire here yet. We won't mention ...Atomic Bomb came out in November 2004 and was nominated last year if you don't. Probable winner: if the committee notice that in time, Kanye again

International group: Arcade Fire, Black Eyed Peas, Green Day, U2, White Stripes
If we were organising the awards, we reckon we'd have gone "to hell with it" and incorporated Irish acts long before now, as it just looks slightly odd otherwise. Probable winner: they haven't, so U2.

International breakthrough act: Arcade Fire, Jack Johnson, John Legend, Daniel Powter, Pussycat Dolls
Daniel Powter? Did Snow get nominated in 1992? Probable winner: as great the thought of Win and Regine quickly trying to think of something to say as they approach the podium is, we suspect they'll play safe and go for the Radio 2 casting vote of Jack Johnson

Outstanding contribution to music: Paul Weller
Didn't say anything about never reforming the Style Council, you know.

The awards are on 15th February, the tie-in album (featuring some people who haven't been named above, which is just taking the piss) is tracklisted here, and we'll hopefully be augmenting every other UK music blog in providing a live minute by minute precis of the ceremony the following day. Chris Evans is presenting again. Whoopee.