Monday, September 10, 2007

Jo Whiley: Amy was robbed

Jo Whiley has abandoned the strict impartiality required of her as presenter of the BBC coverage of the Mercury Prize - which is fair enough, as she'd earlier abandoned the required interviewing technique, too - and insisted that Amy Winehouse should have won the Mercury.

Why?

Erm, because Jo liked the album:

"Everyone was surprised. Amy was the favourite."

Er... Amy was the second favourite, Jo - remember that man from the bookmakers telling you on television that Bat For Lashes was the favourite?
"The Klaxons are lovely boys but Amy should have won.

"Back To Black is definitely my album of the past year - it's spellbinding. Her performance at the Mercury show was amazing. But it's not about how she performed, it's about the album."

We've not had a chance to look at the rules, but we're fairly sure that the prize is meant for the album decided by the judges to be the best of the year, rather than being an award for Jo Whiley's favourite.

We have a sneaking feeling that what probably happened in the judging stage was votes for Amy and votes for Bats For Lashes were cancelling each other out - the 'ooky female vocal' split - which let the Klaxons through. But we're getting tired at this insistence that, somehow, Winehouse had a moral right to the prize. Clearly, when the judges voted they didn't believe she did. When people bet on the likely winner, they didn't feel she had, either.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

She's right though, isn't she.

Sy

Captain-Awesome said...

Definatley not.

Winehouse is bottom of the list for people who should have won. If the Mercury really was based solely on the quality of the music it would have gone to Fionn, but alas thesedays the Mercury is ran by a bank and the major labels who won't let some talentled irish songster win.

CarsmileSteve said...

as opposed to when it used to be run by a mobile phone company and suede, m people and gomez won? all of whom were on major labels. the idea that the mercury, of all prizes, has ever been anything but an industry stitch-up, is just laughable...

Anonymous said...

Jo Whiley's always had an air of "I'm always right" about her, and her ego and wage packet have grown as quickly as her relevance has dropped. The only decent feature she infects these days is the live lounge, which has been turned into a compilation album that gets advertised to a staggering degree on her own show. Thanks to the Arctic Monkeys refusing to allow Love Machine to feature on it, you now get the cringe-inducing Whiley begging big names to consent to feature live on air. But I do love the 'what I watched on telly last night' rock on which she builds her show, this alone is enough to justify her presenting every major musical event Auntie covers. - E.

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