Idolator

Untrue, by the pseudonymous artist Burial, is heavily favored to win this year's Mercury Prize, which is given to the best British album of a 12-month timeframe. But if Untrue should win as expected, the man behind the album will have to come out on stage and perform a song from the record—effectively revealing himself to the world and dispensing with any mystery the album might have at that point. So The Sun, not content with just showing boobs on its inside pages, is going to ruin the fun for everyone and unmask the guy before next month's ceremony! "Conspiracy theories are rife as to who is behind the tunes, with producers NORMAN COOK and APHEX TWIN in the frame," the paper writes, although the more savvy people who read Drowned In Sound are pooh-poohing that idea, saying that the writer only came up with the first two DJ names he could think of in the name of starting controversy. Ooh, burn! More »

Fresh off last year's coronation of the Klaxons as the best band in Britain, this year's Mercury Prize nominations feature quite a range of popular music, from summer jam tournament runner-up Estelle to a few acts that will send you scurrying to Google. More »

Surely it's no coincidence that in the same week that the remake of Hairspray hits theaters, Amy Winehouse, Divine's spiritual heir^*, has made the Mercury Prize shortlist for her debut album, Back to Black. (Listen closely, and somewhere you can hear poor, snubbed-in-'06 Lily Allen grinding her teeth to nubs.) She's up against the Arctic Monkeys (Fall Out Boy for people who prefer track jackets to eyeliner) and Dizzee Rascal (still pluggin' away, god bless him). Still, I'm pulling for Winehouse. Not because I have any particular love for her album, but because the Arctics and Dizzee both already have a Mercury Prize to prop open the screen door on hot days. (The rest of this year's lucky nominees are after the jump.) More »

In a development that will not shock anyone who's glanced at an NME in the past year, the Arctic Monkeys' "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" has nabbed the 2006 Mercury Prize, giving every hot-on-the-Internet act a much-needed shot in the arm. The official site for the best-UK-album award hasn't yet been updated with the news, but you can catch some post-mortem teeth-gnashing ("Winner of the most Generic Student Guitar Album of the Year") on I Love Music. More »