And Finally

Elbow don’t really tip Friendly Fires to win Mercury Prize

By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 8 September 2009

Last year’s Mercury Prize winners Elbow are tipping those Friendly Fires to win this year’s Prize tonight. Well, sort of. It’s not the boldest tip ever, but everyone else is reporting it as a big nod from last year’s winners in the Fires’ favour, and who are we to interpret things otherwise?

The quote on which this story is based sees the Elbow boys saying that their favourite track from this year’s shortlist is Friendly Fire’s ‘Jump In The Pool’. I’m assuming they realise the award is for best album and not best track, and that they gave this quote to 6Music because someone from the BBC station specifically asked them to pick a favourite track off all the shortlisted albums, though I wasn’t there when it happened, it’s possible they are just a bit dim.

Anyway, here is what the Elbow boys said while not tipping Friendly Fires to win: “We wish luck to everybody who is on the list this year, but more than that, congratulations on being on the list. Everybody there, make sure you have a great night. The tune that we have chosen from the 2009 shortlist – it was very difficult as well because there’s so many great people on there but we thought we’d just chose one, kind of our little tip in a way – we’ve chosen Friendly Fires, and the song is called ‘Jump In The Pool'”.

Okay, they did use the word ‘tip’ there. But they bookend it with “kind of” and “in a way”, which seems a bit non-committal, if you ask me. Look what happens when we apply it to other common phrases:

“I kind of remembered your birthday, in a way”
“I kind of did my homework, in a way”
“I kind of fed your cat while you were on holiday, in a way”