The Mercury Prize winner was announced on The One Show last night.

September: now six months since Bojo clamped down on all things fun and populated, and gig-less we remain. In half a year, no one has felt the bass of a speaker thud across their chest, nor begrudgingly sacrificed next month’s rent for a pint of ‘whatever’s cheapest’. Withdrawal symptoms settled in across the nation: better hearing, fewer crowd-induced bruises… nasty stuff, really. Thankfully, just before bucket hats began to see a new life as makeshift face coverings, we were gifted a taste of what once was.
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The Mercury Prize Album of the Year is an annual excuse for any British melomaniac to spend the night in with a few drinks, a few mates and quite literally some of the finest new music around. While watching the ceremony often risks major audience-envy as the crowd screams applause after each set, this year was significantly more personal to watch. Naturally, live performances were out of the question, but many of the shortlisted artists were able to deliver pre-recorded sets specifically for the BBC’s coverage of the event: an hour-long compilation of these performances, presented by Lauren Laverne and uploaded to iPlayer. Not a bad deal, all in all – in fact, many of the videos made it feel like I was standing at the front row of an actual gig, too engrossed by the musicians to notice anyone else around. It’s as close to a concert as I’m getting, anyway, so here are the highlights from The Mercury Prize 2020.

​The world is bored. I am bored. So bored, in fact, that I’ve been watching horror films just to feel something besides the monotony of my new existence (cheerful, eh?). When that failed, I turned to nostalgia, a bittersweet remedy which many of us will have pulled upon of late: the film we once knew line-by-line; the playlist that soundtracked last summer; the Monopoly board reeking of Christmas fallouts.
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A strong contender for my favourite TV shows, GIRLS was what I returned to… again. I like to consider it a sort of Sex & The City for twenty-somethings who don’t have it figured out yet. Hannah, Jessa, Marnie and Shoshanna were my Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda: relatable, honest, funny and also (as chance would have it) living in NYC. The lines are iconic, the characters are as unique and complicated as you can imagine, and – needless to say – the music is also a fucking treat...

In case you forgot, or have been mining in Central America and somehow missed the news entirely, Sex Education returned to Netflix last Friday, 17 January 2020. For most of us, though, the show’s season two release date was marked in our calendars long before we remembered it was also someone’s birthday. Sorry Gran.

The show’s first season was praised for its honesty and inclusivity, approaching the deliciously awkward world of teenage sex in following the humility and hilarity encountered in its characters’ bedrooms. Covering sexual identities, desires, troubles and mistakes, Sex Education manages to tackle each question of ‘who am I?’ with poise, acceptance and – above all – humour.

Despite better intentions to savour the new season and its encompassing joy, I binged it. Like a small child wolfing down an entire Easter egg in one sitting, I gave in to self-indulgence and now it’s over too soon. Or so we thought.

​As announced earlier this week, Ezra Furman is here to prolong our Sex Education high with today’s release of the show’s official soundtrack...

​"Everyone has something they revisit each Christmas. What is it, Love Actually? The Muppet Christmas Carol? It’s A Wonderful Life? (very original, well done you). All valid answers, but all wrong. Christmas is a time for Gavin and Stacey.
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Its Christmas special has sparked annual joy since it was first broadcast in 2008. Now – almost a decade later – Christmas has come early, as co-writers James Corden and Ruth Jones announce a one-off Christmas special, due to hit the BBC on Christmas Day 2019. Fuck. Yes. 

SO, as the good news settles in, let’s look back on some of the most iconic scenes from G&S in the only way we know how: with its soundtrack..."