The Mercury Music Prize is seen as something of a controversial event in the UK. The award can in no sense be seen as representative of prevailing trends in popular music, as the winning album is selected from the shortlist by an extremely small panel of individuals from within the music industry.
Criticism is frequently focussed upon the panel being out of touch with paradigm shifts in popular trends. The 1994 event was a particularly notorious example of this, where what would prove to be hugely influential and popular albums from Britpop figureheads Paul Weller , Blur and Pulp) and Electronica leaders The Prodigy were overlooked in favour of the comparatively safe choice of Adult Contemporary artists M People .
Conversely, the shortlist has often been perceived as a desperate attempt by the panel to appear "cool" regardless of what the actual public's interests are. This occurred particularly in 1999, when Black Star Liner and Talvin Singh , who had been shoehorned into a non-existent "movement" created by the music press called Asian Underground , were selected for the shortlist. The latter's album Ok went on to win the prize, yet was bought by few consumers, who perhaps detected the cynical attempt to market a trend.
Also, the artists selected for the shortlist have in the past been prevailingly from major record labels, which has irked many independent record label owners and artists. The exclusion of independent artistes has purportedly been on the grounds of lack of sales, however the same might be said of many of the major label artists who have made the shortlist. A notorious example of this was Helicopter Girl , whose 2000 album How To Steal The World reportedly sold fewer than 1,000 copies.
The award has often proved to be something of a Poisoned Chalice as artists who have won it have in many cases failed to repeat anything like the success of their prize-winning album. After winning in 1996 with Different Class , Pulp went on to release the grim, downbeat album This Is Hardcore , which sounded the end of the Britpop movement. Similarly, Gomez and Suede 's follow-ups were greeted by disappointing sales in the context of their prize-winning debuts.
