Amy Winehouse Scores Another Victory for Drag Queens Everywhere

jharv | July 17, 2007 10:40 am
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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.)

While the Mercury Prize seems to be taken as seriously by its countrymen as a royalist monarchy or Rowan Atkinson, this collection of mostly wack-ass NME-rock still seems like a pretty piss-poor collection of musicians to hold up as representing the best the nation has to offer. Being American, and therefore living in a country responsible for things like this, I can’t really talk that much shit, but any Brits (or uppity Anglophiles) reading this are more than welcome to talk as much shit as they like in the comments box. At least there are no Antony-style “Well, he was born here” boners on this year’s list. I’m Irish and French, making it my genetic destiny to despise the English, and even I got pissed off about that one.

Bat for Lashes Fur and Gold (Echo) Fionn Regan The End of History (Lost Highway) New Young Pony Club Fantastic Playroom (Modular) Klaxons Myths of the Near Future (Rinse/Polydor) The Young Knives Voices of Animals and Men (Transgressive) Maps We Can Create (Mute) The Views Hats Off to the Buskers (1965) Jamie T Panic Prevention” (Virgin) Basquiat Strings Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford (F-Ire)

* Minus the shit-eating, at least as far as we know.

Arctics, Winehouse Make Mercury Prize Shortlist [Billboard]