Elbow Bag Mercury Music Prize

09th September 2008 | by Gavin Riley

Elbow have won the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Music Prize. They were announced as the victors tonight at London's Grosvenor Hotel.

The band picked up a cheque for £20,000 and the prestigious Mercury Prize for their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid, which was judged as the best LP over the course of the past twelve months.

They beat off competition from bookies favourite Burial, who added further mystique to his character by failing to show for the ceremony.

Frontman Guy Garvey exclaimed the award as “quite literally the best thing that has ever happened to us”, while dedicating the award to Bryan Glancy, a musician and close friend of the band who died suddenly in 2006. Indeed the album notes and final track 'Friend Of Ours' is dedicated to the memory of the Prestwich singer.

Elbow were also nominated in 2001 for their debut album, Asleep In The Back, but lost out to PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

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The judges for the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Music Prize were:

Simon Frith - music author/Professor of Music
Dean Jackson - BBC Nottingham 'The Beat'
Mark Findlay - Head of Music Global
Janice Long - Radio 2 presenter
Kitty Empire - Observer music critic
Conor McNicholas - Editor NME
Charle Hazlewood - Conductor
Mike Flynn - Jazz Editor Time Out
Arwa Haider - Music Editor, Metro
George Ergatoudis - Head of Music, Radio 1
Jude Rogers - The Guardian/Word magazine