Nationwide Mercury Prize Albums of the Year Shortlist Revealed

I Like Music are surprised there's no Corrine Bailey Ray or Keane on the shortlist, no Lily Allen or Nerina Pallot, no Kate Bush or Richard Ashcroft. The Automatic, Kooks, Research, Webb Sisters and Zutons were also oddly missed off this year's shortlist. But then, there are so many great albums and only 12 spaces on the prize list.

"Above all, this year's shortlist for the Nationwide Mercury Prize is about the art of the songwriter - if you want to know what life is like in Britain today, listen to the country's musicians!" says Chair of Judges, Simon Frith.

"The list contains songs that are witty, sad, angry and reflective; songs exploring emotions and debating attitudes; songs about love lost and love found; songs both personal and political, happy and anxious; songs using a wonderful variety of genres, beats, sound and moods."

This year's list draws special attention to the continuing musical importance and vitality of cities throughout the UK. Two of the artists, Arctic Monkeys with Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and Richard Hawley with Coles Corner, continue to live and work in Sheffield. Editors, with The Back Room, and Guillemots with Through the Windowpane, are both based in Birmingham while Isobel Campbell, the former Belle & Sebastian singer and cellist whose Ballad of the Broken Seas album with Mark Lanegan is also shortlisted, works and records out of her hometown of Glasgow.
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