Mercury Prize Shortlist Announced… With Plan B Topping The Acts

One of our Her.ie’s favourite artists Plan B will go head to head with past nominee Richard Hawley as joint favourites to win the Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize.

The shortlist of 12 was announced for the highly-valued award today.

Established acts such as The Maccabees and Field Music will also battle it out against lesser known names and emerging acts such as Django Django and Alt-J who have won critical acclaim. The competition will be close…

Rapper Plan B - whose real name is Ben Drew - is the first artist to make the list for a soundtrack album, with Ill Manors, which accompanies the gritty film of the same name which he directed.

Forty-five-year-old Hawley, the oldest artist on the shortlist, was previously nominated in 2006 for Coles Corner and had been a hot contender, although he lost out to Arctic Monkeys.

When Monkeys frontman Alex Turner collected the prize for his album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, he announced: "Someone call 999 - Richard Hawley's been robbed."

An honest way of announcing who he felt should have received his award, nothing like Kanye taking Taylor Swift’s award away from her at the VMAs…

Plan B at the Mercury Nominations Launch.

The list fails to recognise the notable commercial successes we all know such as Coldplay and Florence + The Machine and Emile Sande.

Django Django and Alt-J have built a huge buzz around their debut albums earlier this year, as has fellow nominee Jessie Ware.

The prize guarantees a huge boost in sales for the winner as well as valuable publicity to all nominees.

Simon Frith, the chair of the judging panel, said the shortlist "showcases a wonderful variety of musical voices, emotions and ambitions".

Stay tuned to find out who is the winner…