Thom Yorke : "Analyse" Live @ The Mercury Music Awards

Last night's Mercury Music Awards provided no shocks as the judges opted for the easy option, and chose The Arctic Monkeys as the winner of the prestigous prize for 2006. Now, The Mercury Awards is famed for championing lesser known artists, recent winners include Roni Size and Talvin Singh. Furthermore, Portishead's era-defining opus "Dummy" was rightly chosen in the mid 90's, while you couldn't argue with last year's choice, Anthony & The Johnsons

The Arctic Monkeys won it this year because they where apparently the best band in Britain, bar none. They did have the fastest selling debut of all time in the UK, but the judges conveniently forgot the amount of hype that has been surrounding them. Basically, what I am trying to say is, if you tell someone something is good over and over, they will eventually believe you.

There is nothing wrong with their music, but singing about 'dancefloors' and other teenage problems has been done since the advent of rock'n roll. If this is the best thing that came out of Britain, then there is some serious problems in this country. I can think of hundreds of more talented and deserving bands. But then, they haven't been hyped anywhere near as much or given as much exposure. It is this sort of attitude that makes me hate magazine articles like, "The 100 Greatest Albums Of All Time" etc. You get the same old crap every single time.

The Monkeys frontman had this to say, " We made the best album of the last year, and the judges agreed.....". Oh well then, that is the end of that argument....

Rant over, Thom Yorke performed a stripped down version of "Analyse" at the ceremony, it has been wrongly credited as his first solo performance of a track from "The Eraser". This version is better than the album, and seems to make more sense with just a piano and vocals.