So that’s it for another year. Another male winner – there’s not been a female winner since PJ Harvey’s second win in 2011 – and perhaps not the most thrilling, but certainly a deserving one. Sampha puts grotty, negative, cloudy emotions into a kind of perspective, and maybe even draws something noble from them – a laudable aim for any songwriter. And Glass Animals and Alt-J go home empty handed, except for that “well done for taking part” statue, which is nice. Thanks for following along everyone!

Down some mineral water and stock up the tear ducts after the last performance, because here comes (No-One Knows Me) Like the Piano again. It does feel like a properly canonical ballad – it has already soundtracked countless hours of hipster sorrow, but is the kind of thing that could easily cross over to the X Factor this year.

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He looks delighted and astonished, as he bigs up his brothers for “making me believe in myself,” along with his parents. “I’m so thankful for this, this is absolutely incredible” he adds.

And the winner is... Sampha!

An extremely waved Idris Elba says hello to his mum and dad and makes a slightly slurring appreciation of English music. The winner is... Sampha!

OK it’s time for the winner to be announced! Lauren says it’s the longest a judging panel have deliberated over the prize. She kind of gives it away by saying it’s a debut from south London.

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Skepta! Last year’s winner rolls up in what I think is an old-school Vauxhall Vectra (Vauxhall gang please confirm), to perform Man, still a diamond-tipped bit of self-affirmation. With his tucked in T-shirt, he actually does, per the lyrics, look a little bit like he just came from church. He bigs up Stormzy and J Hus, and nods approvingly at his live guitarist. Killed it as per.

It’s Glass Animals themselves, with Life Itself. To these ears it’s features an insufferably dinky, frankly offensive take on “tribal” percussion, paired with an overstuffed, grossly inelegant (though certainly catchy) top line. Please explain in the comments why people like this.

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Clara Amfo now, talking about the “tension” and “passion” of the judging process, that apparently brought some judges close to tears at times. I mean, if Glass Animals were being championed to win, I’d cry too. It’d be like 12 Angry Men in there.

Have you noticed how Lauren Laverne is picking up on Jools Holland’s public speaking style?

Sampha now, playing (No-One Knows Me) Like the Piano, a kind of endurance test to see if you can avoid crying for three and a half minutes. To be honest I thought he’d never top Indecision in the ballad stakes, and maybe he hasn’t, but this comes damn close. It’s very on-the-nose in its expression of music interfacing with grief, but that bald honesty is what gives it its power. “A beautiful performance”, says Lauren, accurately.

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Kate Tempest plays a barnstorming version of Don’t Fall In, delivering a sermon like a soapbox soothsayer, eviscerating the moneyed classes in this country to a backdrop of chaotic, often beatless effects. I mean, I love J Hus, but that was the lyrical display of the evening – like a crazy person on the tube who you actually want to listen to. Stormzy looks utterly delighted by it. Amazing stuff!

Nearly decision time...

Literally no-one is cheering the Ed Sheeran sales stats. He does a video message, where he says his main goals were to play Shepherd’s Bush Empire and get a Mercury nom.

Ten mins or so until decision time. So who will win? When the nominations came out I thought Sampha was an absolute shoo-in. While it’s not my favourite album of the crop, it ticks a lot of Mercury boxes: progressive, emotive, populist, robustly written, but not wildly challenging and even a little bit tasteful. And, of course, featuring some wonderful songs, which articulate loss and anxiety in a soul voice for the ages – all of which still makes him a serious contender.

In with a chance though I think are Kate Tempest, for articulating the sheer rubbishness of post-Brexit Britain, though it’s certainly an album of storytelling rather than incredible musicianship. Loyle Carner, whose live show is irresistible and whose lazy-river flow is arguably more satisfying than the gear changes of Stormzy and J Hus, is a good outsider pick.

And Glass Animals I guess, if the bookies are anything to go by. They got it wrong last year, picking David Bowie, and the year before, picking Jamie xx.

Blossoms perform Charlemagne, and it’s given a bit of grit with some added lead guitar shredding – though is still at heart a massively cheesy soft-rock song. Bit weird that staunch indie blokes have made these guys massive, while the far more trad Big Moon remain niche. Still, Charlemagne remains essentially a very good song. I have docked any remaining hipster points I may have had.

Dinosaur here, playing what is probably the highest-profile gig of their career, playing a frantic, condensed version of Living, Breathing. You know what, if they don’t win – and they won’t – the Mercury prize is still a fillip for jazz performers in this country: the Comet is Coming, Gwilym Simcock, Led Bib and others would all probably say that’s is been great for their careers.

Idris Elba gets on the mic again, bigging up host Lauren Laverne, and claiming that Britons pronounce Hyundai “Hyundoo”. Literally no one says it like that Idris.

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Stormzy performs in a live tableau of the cover art from his album Gang Signs & Prayer, which you shouldn’t rule out tonight, even if Skepta won last year. First Things First shows he’s not going cuddly, further undermining Dstrkt’s credibility and literally spitting on the mic. But then it’s like falling into a feather bed for Blinded By Your Grace Pt 1. I find this track a little bit jejune, and it’s hard to award anything more than points for trying for Stormzy’s singing voice. It’s certainly second to Loyle Carner in the gospel vocals stakes tonight. But it’s heartfelt stuff, and Stormzy remains incredibly charismatic. The crowd loooove it.

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The Big Moon up next, and the chugging guitars are weirdly bracing amid this lineup. They play Cupid which is a brilliant song about – yes, another! – dick of a man who makes his ejaculate taste nice by drinking pineapple juice. The plummy vocals grating against the gnarly guitars are a superb combo. It’s not a classic album, but they show they deserve their place here tonight.

I think this person means that Richard Dawson should have been on the shortlist, in which case yes, Snarlygog, never has a truer word been spoken, even though you spelled Peasant wrongly.

Richard Dawson and his Peasent album has been the most outside release this year.

J Hus medley time! Fisherman hat present and correct, J Hus rolls through Friendly and Did U See, offering to season women’s chicken, and the rest. It’s like a club PA has rolled into the building, if you go to clubs with people eating dinner on the dancefloor. He can’t say “penis” on BBC4 though so I want my licence fee back.

I slagged off Alt-J just a couple of posts ago, but this performance isn’t making me feel bad about it. The elements are interesting – vocal samples jumping out on you, brooding guitars, and a spartan atmos which is absolutely my thing – but they cohere like trifle ingredients chucked at a wall. That this lot played the O2 is one of the most baffling things I have encountered in my life. Next!

Next up it’s Loyle Carner with The Isle of Arran, which uses this incredible sample...

... and makes it even better than the Dr Dre track that also samples it. Performed live by the House Gospel Choir it’s even more powerful. This track is the blockbuster opener to his Mercury-nommed album and, while the production feels American, the flow is all English phonics. He wears a T-shirt reading Son of Jean, bigging up his mum. Bless, in every sense.

Other people who probably won’t win:

  • Alt-J, because they’ve won it before. Also because they use smart production to hoodwink people into believing they write good songs, but without actually bothering to write hooks. An arrogant, talentless pox on the British music scene who really shouldn’t be further enabled.
  • The Big Moon, because what is essentially Britpop doesn’t feel very 2017 – though the lyrics, featuring a police lineup of essentially crap but still frustratingly attractive men, make it Bumble in grunge-pop form. Works best in one-two song doses imo.
  • Dinosaur, because it’s jazz, and service to jazz, beyond lips, is never forthcoming from the Mercury panel. Their record Together, As One isn’t the total knockout it would need to be to win – it has some fusion idiosyncrasies that you’ll either love or hate, and I personally can’t get on board with Jimmy Smith-style organ or the sometimes fussy electronics. But trumpeter and bandleader Laura Jurd nods satisfyingly to the bright melodies of Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis, and stuff like Living, Breathing swings hard. Definitely check it out if you haven’t already.

First up playing live is the xx, performing On Hold.

They won’t win tonight, because they’ve won it before, and because there’s some middling, pulled-punches tracks on their album I See You. But in some ways it’s a deserving record – when they’re good, as on this record’s sensationally good singles, they hit you square in the tear ducts and hypothalamus simultaneously.

And Oh Hold is emphatically one of those sensational singles, perfectly meshing their Young Marble Giants-style minimalist songwriting with Jamie xx’s Balearically-minded production. Jamie jabs his MPC (or whatever it is) with split-second precision, the guitars echo eerily, and Romy and Oliver’s vocals together remain one of the ultimate weapons in British pop. The crowd are euphoric!

The Mercury gang have been doing a series of Boomerang vids of the nominees, of which this by Blossoms is much the best:

Idris meanwhile shows off his guns on telly. Strong shirt. A nation ovulates.

And we’re off! The BBC4 show has begun. Harriet meanwhile is forward in time somewhere, watching the ceremony live, and Stormzy looks a bit like this:

Look it’s just a smartphone camera OK. If we could afford an iPhone X we wouldn’t be asking for your cash all the time.

Rapping up the nominees

One of the key stories of the Mercury this year is the quality of the rap nominees. While the prize is sometimes attacked for being unadventurous, something it should be praised for is consistently making room for British MCs. From winners Ms Dynamite, Young Fathers, Skepta, Speech Debelle and Dizzee Rascal, to nominees like Ty, Roots Manuva, the Streets, MIA, Ghostpoet, Plan B and Kano, it’s got a pretty good pedigree. Y no Wiley though?

Anyway, of 2017’s crop, J Hus expertly crystallises the neo-Afrobeats sound that’s ruling London and does so with stoicism and sexual magnetism; Kate Tempest zooms masterfully from close portraits to panoramic social commentary; Loyle Carner’s soulful British take on boom-bap is full of masterfully weighted bars; Stormzy’s voice when he gets indignant and contemptuous is probably the best sound on any of these records. Any of them would be worthy winners.

The perception of our chief critic Alexis Petridis is that the panel won’t award it to an out-and-out rapper the year after Skepta winning for Konnichiwa. BUT MAYBE THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.

Red carpet arrivals

Don’t they scrub up well!

Down the other end of the bookies’ picks are Blossoms, whose generic (but not charmless) soft lad-rock the bookmakers rightly presume the panel will find way too unsophisticated – they’re at 33-1.

And they’re joined by Ed Sheeran, also at 33-1 for ÷, which united the critics as much in disparagement as it did the public in adoration. Given the panel are made of a number of the former, with our own Harriet Gibsone giving ÷ two stars and bemoaning its “sharp stench of a salesman’s cheap cologne”, it’s almost impossible for him to win. He’s also not turned up to the ceremony because he’s on tour in the US. He’ll at least have a friend on the judging panel in Jessie Ware – the pair have frequently written songs for each other.

Yes, his lyricism leaves no symbol – Superman, aeroplanes, rocks – unmolested on the way to kneejerk poignancy. Yes, his snobbery around Ministry of Sound compilations is utterly unexcusable. But, ultimately, he can write songs – even the massively maligned Galway Girl has a cast iron melodic logic. He shouldn’t be the outsider with Glass Animals the favourite, and yet here we are.

Could bookies' favourites Glass Animals win it?

After backing Sampha and then Kate Tempest, the bookies are now throwing their weight behind Glass Animals, the Oxford four-piece who have had some admirable success this year, particularly in America, a country known for its impressionability, and willingness to be cowed by British invaders.

*swigs Haterade*

Personally I think of Glass Animals as what Wild Beasts would sound like if they were eunuchs, ie pointless. They’re as annoying as Clapham accountants on coke at an electro-swing night, who coincidentally make up the bulk of their fanbase – the kind of people who find pineapples and glitter exciting, and use the word “weird” to describe anything north of Sam Smith and Bake Off. DON’T DO IT, HARRIET.

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One notable absentee from the below list is our deputy music editor Harriet Gibsone, who is on the judging panel for the second year in a row. She’ll hopefully send back some exciting goss about Marcus Mumford’s new child or something.

She and he (Marcus, not the child) sit alongside musicians Jamie Cullum, Ella Eyre, Lianne La Havas, and Jessie Ware; radio DJs Clara Amfo and Mistajam; radio bigwigs Mike Walsh and Jeff Smith; and journos Will Hodgkinson and Phil Alexander, all overseen by former EMI CEO Tony Wadsworth.

You’d could say that the famous people on this list lean, taste-wise, towards the hip-hop, grime and soul on the list, but that would probably just be massively reductive … I should add that Harriet has kept admirably shtum these last weeks and I have no idea who is likely to win.

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The Guardian’s critics have got behind their favourite runners and riders, from J Hus to the Big Moon, pictured above:

Welcome to the Mercury prize announcement 2017!

Welcome! It’s time for a team of industry professionals to plunge themselves into the age-old philosophical quandary about the subjectivity of art, and decide which British album is 2017’s “best”.

As usual, the shortlist is a pretty broad – and slightly middlebrow – selection, getting behind everything from Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (over 1bn streams in the US alone) to Dinosaur’s Together, As One (5,000 monthly listeners on Spotify). Here are the albums facing off tonight:

We’ll give you some preamble, and then will be following along with the coverage on BBC4 from 9pm.

Contributor

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

The GuardianTramp

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