Apoplectic British music magazine NME has just issued its latest Future 50 list—“the 50 acts pushing things forward in 2009,” in the rag’s sorta-esteemed opinion—and one thing that’s sort of surprising to me is how pop-centric the overall list is. Sure, the top two slots are taken by Pitchfork darlings (a one-two punch of Animal Collective and The Knife), but the list also includes Lady GaGa, frequent Girls Aloud collaborators Xenomania, and the Idolator-beloved site Popjustice? Also the kids’ program Yo Gabba Gabba!, and… The Take That stage show?? Also, perhaps to goose newsstand sales by putting a little bit of the fear of God into anyone browsing the list online, the hyper-annoying, hypersexist, Hypercolored outfit 3OH!3 is at No. 41. The full list after the jump. More »
Now that the British music establishment has declared its favorite home-grown albums of the year with the Mercury Prize nominations, the cheeky British pop site Popjustice has seen fit to announce its shortlist for The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize, which honors the best British single of the year. The artist behind the winning song gets twenty pounds, and the voting is decided by you! (And me, and anyone else.) So all you commenters who want to avenge Lily Allen’s being left off the Mercury Prize list can. Other nominees include the Pet Shop Boys’ “Love Etc” and Saint Etienne’s “Method Of Modern Love”; I’m probably going to throw my weight behind Girls Aloud’s “The Promise,” what with it being completely overplayed (yet not played enough) by my assortment of digital-music players in recent months. All the nominees, after the jump! More »
Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns, Florence & The Machine’s Lungs, and the self-titled debuts from Glasvegas and La Roux are among the nominees for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, awarded annually to the best album from the United Kingdom or Ireland. While there are some glaring omissions as always (um, Micachu?????), digging around for videos by the nominees revealed a couple of new-to-me acts—the hip-hop artist Speech Debelle, the experimental jazz outfit Led Bib—who proved intriguing on first listen. The nominees, and representative videos, after the jump. More »
