Towards the end of 2009, long-term Mercury-watchers breathed a sigh of relief. After a few drearily uneventful years in which the committee doled out the gong to artists the public had either already clasped to their hearts or would go on to clasp to their hearts – Franz Ferdinand, Dizzee Rascal, Arctic Monkeys, Elbow – last year saw the Mercury prize happily return to its traditional role as the music industry's equivalent of the black spot.
Indeed, its ability to wield a negative effect over the career of the winner seemed to have grown even more potent with the passing of time. Speech Debelle had hardly finished her acceptance speech when everything started to go wrong. Her album, Speech Therapy, became the lowest-selling Mercury winner in the prize's history – two months after the awards ceremony, it had sold a meagre 10,000 copies. Debelle's ensuing tour played to sparse crowds, she ended up splitting from her record label and, in a final indignity, she was booed off at a computer game launch after trying to rap along to Take That's Pray. By comparison, the post-Mercury career of Talvin Singh has been one long dizzying commercial triumph.
In fairness, what happened seemed faintly surprising: if Speech Therapy wasn't the most ground-breaking nomination on last year's list, nor was it a bad album. In fact, it was quite good – which might have been part of the problem.
Over the years, one of the Mercury's house specials has been informing an incredulous public that a quite good British urban album is incontestably the best record of the year. This is not only wrong, it's also deeply patronising to the artists in question, some of whom might well have gone on to make a record that actually was the best album of the year had the Mercury not stuck its well-meaning oar in and turned the spotlight on them too early.
Understandably, this time around the shortlist visibly seeks to avoid a repeat of last year's unfortunate events. The solitary entry from the urban market, Dizzee Rascal's Tongue N' Cheek, is already a tried and tested commercial success, as are Mumford And Sons' debut Sigh No More and Biffy Clyro's Only Revolutions, the latter a rare nomination from the arena of hard rock. The xx, Laura Marling, Villagers and I Am Kloot fetch up already staggering under the weight of critical acclaim. Foals and Wild Beasts' albums are substantially more adventurous than your average alt-rock effort; Paul Weller's Wake Up the Nation is substantially more adventurous than your average Paul Weller album.
You could level the accusation of tokenism at the inclusion of a solitary jazz album by Kit Downes; regardless of their merits, jazz albums never win. But given that, according to Courtney Pine, British jazz albums tend to shift around 3,000, any exposure to a wider audience is a victory in itself. You could argue, as people doubtless will, that there are better or more audacious albums out there than the 12 nominated, but under the circumstances it's hard for the winner to be a controversial choice. A shame for long-term Mercury-watchers, whose attitude to the prize recalls that of the Ski Sunday viewer. They tune in largely to watch people fall flat on their faces – but then that's probably the point.