Will the Large Hadron Collider solve the mystery of M People's 1994 Mercury Music Prize victory?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in case you didn’t know, is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. When it is finally activated on Wednesday, after ten years of civil engineering construction, the LHC will replicate the conditions of the universe immediately after the Big Bang.
It’s hoped that the LHC will help scientists get to the bottom of the what exactly “dark matter” is, among other mysteries of the universe; although doubters claim that there’s a very real possibility that the device could basically rip the very fabric of space and time apart and suck the entire planet into a black hole. As far as opposing viewpoints go, then, the LHC has generated some pretty extreme ones.
What too few people seem to be asking, however, is: What does this device mean for pop music?
One of the most vexatious decisions of our times, for example – 1994′s Mercury Music Prize verdict – should surely be near the top of the LHC physicists’ list of mysteries to solve.
Let’s take a look at the shortlist for that year, shall we?
1. Blur – Parklife
2. Ian McNabb – Head Like A Rock
3. Shara Nelson – What Silence Knows
4. Michael Nyman – The Piano Concerto and MGV
5. The Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation
6. Pulp – His’n'Hers
7. Take That – Everything Changes
8. Therapy? – Troublegum
9. Paul Weller – Wild Wood
10. M People – Elegant Slumming
I’d point you to item numbers 1 and 5 as clear frontrunners for this particular year’s prize, physicists. I would also like to highlight items 6, 7, 8 and 9 as decent outside punts. I would class item 10 – the eventual winner, lest we forget – alongside items 2, 3, 4 as a highly unlikely victor against all notions of common sense and decency.
So what happened? Were there shady record industry shenanigans at work? Was there some kind of betting syndicate behind this ridiculous occurence? Both are possible. We are unlikely to know until every single mystery of this sizeable universe of ours has been resolved. That’s what the LHC is for, as I understand it, and I therefore ask – nay, DEMAND – that those white-coated pointdexters address this issue just as soon as they’ve dealt with all that dark matter stuff.
Pop music deserves it.
It’s 16 years since, and they won fair and square: One Night in Heaven, Moving on Up, Renaissance and the monumetal cover Don’t look any Further, were all singles from the album which both sold shedloads and was very critically acclaimed, they also played Glastonbury on the back of this album, won Brit awards and their music is still played now.
Just because the Brit-pop era was big at the time The Levellers, Oasis, Blur, Pulp etc…there was and is more music and life and than those aforemementioned bands. M.People proved that, by making dance music accesible for the masses in a classy way.
One Night in Heaven was so uniquely unifying to all and if you didn’t embrace then you were free to walk away and ignore the music and them. Just because they won the MMP, doesn’t discont thew brilliance of anyone else in the Top 9.
Embrace the music, stop hating, get over it and move on up!
@Ebs …you sir have filled me with so much hate I’m struggling to see the keyboard ji’;m typigns onse