There is a sense in which the Mercury prize is the music industry's equivalent of a piñata: no sooner is the shortlist hoisted into view than everyone - record label bosses, music journalists and, in a good year, the actual nominees - whips out a stick and starts beating the living daylights out of it.
Over the years, it has been accused of being too commercial, too musically abstruse, and in one deranged broadsheet attack after last year's ceremony, of bringing about the financial ruin of Britain's record shops.
But this year a conundrum arose. While there was agreement that the shortlist contrived to make British music look less exciting than it actually is, no one could really find much to fault in the albums on it. There were plenty of suggestions for albums the panel missed - notably Kate Bush's Aerial - but it was hard to see how their inclusion would have altered the nominations' overall complexion.
Among the more radical suggestions overlooked was Girls Aloud's Chemistry: a wildly inventive record that happens to have been made by a TV-manufactured girl band and precisely the kind of album that the Mercury takes itself far too seriously to countenance.
Nevertheless, it's hard to complain about the winner. The Arctic Monkeys' debut is a fantastic record, largely because it's the work of a preternaturally gifted lyricist. You could argue that there were nominees more musically ambitious but there are none that offer as stark and penetrating a lyrical snapshot of Britain in 2006. It's another worthy winner, but rock and pop music aren't all about worthiness.
It's tempting to long for the Mercury to do something radical: nominate a manufactured pop band, give the award to one of the folk, jazz or classical musicians shortlisted every year and doomed to go away empty handed, even go back to the days when it seemed to hand the prize out at random.
· Alexis Petridis is the Guardian's rock critic
